HOPE

Enhances:
Optimism

Balances/Counters:
Despair, Impatience

The Basic Practice

Hope is a positive and potent spiritual practice with the power to pull us
through difficult times. It is usually described with light metaphors — a
ray, a beam, a glimmer of hope; the break in the clouds; the light at the
end of the dark tunnel. It is often discovered in unexpected places.

Hope can be learned with practice. Certain attitudes support it. One is
patience, an ability to tolerate delays, a willingness to let events unfold
in their own time. The other is courage, an attitude of confidence even
when facing the unknown. A third is persistence, the determination to
keep going no matter what happens. We have hope when we can say, all
will be well, and we mean it.

Why This Practice May Be For You

Hope is the basic ingredient of optimism, a tendency to dwell on the best

possibilities. It is a frequent companion of another spiritual practice —
enthusiasm. It, too, is energizing. The greeting "Be of good cheer" puts it
well.

But a more common — and very telling expression — is "Hope for the
best, but expect the worst." The more likely outcome, it implies, is the
worst. When we are without hope, we easily fall victim to such
negativism. When the light of hope is absent, we are overcome by gloom
and doom, despair and defeatism.

In terms of personal style, without hope, we find it difficult to be patient

and are easily frustrated. We may lack the courage to continue struggling
against adversity. We are faint-hearted and quickly discouraged. We
really do expect the worst.

Quotations

The Chinese have a saying: If you keep a green bough in your heart surely
the singing bird will come. — Chinese saying quoted in The Web in the
Sea by Alice O. Howell

Let us plant dates even though those who plant them will never eat
them. We must live by the love of what we will never see.... Such
disciplined love is what has given prophets, revolutionaries, and saints
the courage to die for the future they envisaged. They make their own
bodies the seed of their highest hope. — Rubem Alves quoted in There Is
A Season by Joan Chittister

A part of our obligation to our own being and to our descendants is to

study life and our conditions, searching always for the authentic
underpinnings of hope. — Wendell Berry quoted in Hope, Human and
Wild by Bill McKibben
Prayer is hope's breathing. When we stop praying, we stop hoping. —
Dom Pedro Casaldaliga quoted in Lent by Megan McKenna

There are also times in life when a person has to rush off in pursuit of
hopefulness. — Jean Giono quoted in The Music of Time by John S.
Dunne

No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There's too much work
to do. — Dorothy Day quoted in In a High Spiritual Season by Joan
Chittister

He that lives in hope dances without music. — George Herbert quoted in

Joy by Beverly Elaine Eanes

Hope is the foundation for creativity, inspiration, joy and all those
emotions which allow us to transcend ourselves. — Verena Kast in Joy,
Inspiration and Hope

We have only begun

to imagine the fullness of life.
How could we tire of hope?
So much is in the bud.
— Denise Levertov in Candles in Babylon

The gift of hope makes every person, as well as the whole family of
humanity, very valuable; the vision of future rightness sends back a
stamp of rightness into the present. It also makes life a little more
playful. What we cannot do in a million calendar squares, God will do in
his own time. — Lewis B. Smedes in How Can It Be All Right When
Everything Is All Wrong?

The note we end on is and must be the note of inexhaustible possibility

and hope. — Evelyn Underhill quoted in God Hunger by John Kirvan
Book Excerpts

from Seven Spiritual Gifts of Waiting by Holly W.

Whitcomb

Holly Whitcomb presents seven ways waiting can

become a spiritual teacher for you. Here is an
excerpt on hope which we see as a spiritual practice
that encompasses patience and waiting..

"I hate waiting just about as much as anything in

this world. I will not eat at a restaurant if I have to stand and wait. I will
not even approach a freeway entrance if there is any possibility I will
have to sit in traffic. In Milwaukee, I will drive twenty extra minutes, the
complete length of State Street or Wisconsin Avenue, in order to avoid
coming to a standstill on the freeway. If I have to wait in line at the
grocery store, I will bossily charge up to the manager and ask why
customers are waiting and suggest they open a new checkout lane
without delay.

"I obviously could use a good dose of Advent.

"The season of Advent, more than any other time of the church year,
invites us to embrace the spiritual discipline of waiting. The season of
Advent will not be rushed. The Advent carols must be sung, the Advent
candles must be lighted week by week, and the doors of the Advent
Calendar must be opened day by day. Christmas will finally come when
all the expectant Scriptures have been read and when the baby has
finally been born.

"Twenty-two years ago I stood at the pulpit of Redeemer Church on the

first Sunday of Advent, waiting. I was twenty-nine years old and nine-
months pregnant with our second child. Looking like a Mack truck that
Sunday, I preached about Advent while I waited to give birth. Being
pregnant during Advent is a rich and marvelous experience. Pregnancy,
perhaps more than anything else, teaches the gifts of waiting. That year I
was waiting not only for a baby to be born, but for other things as well. I
was waiting to be employed and was looking for a church. I was waiting
to make friends. I was waiting for a time to stop grieving the small
university community we had just left. I was waiting for money to buy a
new furnace. I was waiting for Milwaukee to feel like home.

"Every stage of our lives involves some new form of waiting. When our
children are tiny, we wait years for a good night's sleep. When our
children are toddlers, we wait eagerly for the time when they will no
longer wear diapers, can take a bath on their own, and get dressed by
themselves. When our children are teenagers and driving, we often wait
anxiously until we hear the front door close and know they are safely
home. And at any stage of life, we can experience waiting for the results
of medical tests. This kind of waiting is perhaps the hardest of all. A
weekend can seem like an eternity if we are waiting to find out whether
a tumor is malignant or benign.

"Waiting presents an enormous challenge. We are impatient, I-can-fix-it

kinds of people . . . but not all situations can be fixed. We assume that
everything in life can be made better by taking action, but sometimes it
just isn't so.

"A writer whose retreat I was attending talked about a single friend who,
at age forty, decided she would like to adopt a child. This woman did her
homework and talked to several adoption agencies. When she was told
that the process of adopting a child would take at the very least a year,
she said, 'Forget it. I just don't have that kind of time.'
"We shrink when we are presented with situations where action does no
good at all. We deplore the passivity of waiting. Yet waiting is an
enormous opportunity if we regard it as a wise teacher. Waiting offers us
a great deal when we choose to learn.

"Waiting is an important guest to honor in the guest house of our

humanity. If we consciously allow waiting to be our teacher, we can
accommodate waiting more peacefully. If we welcome waiting as a
spiritual discipline, waiting will present its spiritual gifts. Waiting
contains some of our richest spiritual opportunities if we are conscious
enough and courageous enough to name them and live into them.

"Bingo halls and casinos often post the sign, 'You must be present to win.'
In order to convert the inescapable lessons of waiting into deliberate
spiritual gifts, we, too, have to be present; we need to pay attention.
We need to actively participate in this dramatic conversion from waiting
as something to be endured to waiting as a gift.

"The Bible has many dramatic stories about waiting. The Israelites
wandered in the wilderness for forty years waiting to get into the
Promised Land. Jacob waited fourteen years before winning the hand of
Rachel, his beloved. The Apostle Paul waited over and over to be
released from prison. Jesus waited forty days in the desert temped by
the devil."
Teaching Stories

This little book is an absolutely marvelous collection

of essays organized around 14 lines of the famous
prayer attrributed to Saint Francis of Assisi. Here is a
passage about being a beacon of hope.

"We are not saints, we are not heroes. Our lives are
lived in the quiet corners of the ordinary. We build
tiny hearth fires, sometimes barely strong enough to
give off warmth. But to the person lost in the darkness, our tiny flame
may be the road to safety, the path to salvation.

"It is not given us to know who is lost in the darkness that surrounds us or
even if our light is seen. We can only know that against even the smallest
of lights, darkness cannot stand.

"A sailor lost at sea can be guided home by a single candle. A person lost
in a wood can be led to safety by a flickering flame. It is not an issue of
quality or intensity or purity. It is simply an issue of the presence of
light."

from Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace: Living in the Spirit of the

Prayer of Saint Francis by Kent Nerburn

Household, Group, and Community Projects

Plant trees. Many people plant trees in whose shade they will never sit
during their lifetimes. This act reflects confidence and hope in the
future.
ATTENTION
Enhances:
Awareness

Balances/Counters:
Distraction, Stress

The Basic Practice

Attention is also known as mindfulness, awareness, concentration,

recollection. It is a primary practice, and not just alphabetically. We
must stay alert or we risk missing critical elements of the spiritual life —
moments of grace, opportunities for gratitude, evidence of our
connections to others, signs of the presence of Spirit. The good news is
that attention can be practiced anywhere, anytime, in the daily rounds
of our lives.

Begin by doing one thing at a time. Keep your mind focused on whatever
you happen to be doing at the moment. It is through the mundane and
the familiar that we discover a world of ceaseless wonders. Train
yourself to notice details.

Why This Practice May Be For You

Most of us have exhibited the symptoms of lack of attention at one time

or another. It's actually harder to stay awake than we might think.
Perhaps we are easily distracted by trivial pursuits, attracted to any
media message, ready to jump into any conversation, or susceptible to
periods of endless surfing through the information and choices available
to us.

Eventually, without awareness, we end up living in a daze of stimulation

without any grasp of its significance. We are operating on automatic
pilot. Because nothing really registers on our consciousness, we feel
drained of energy.

Sometimes, however, not paying attention has just the opposite effect:
everything registers, and we find we don't know what to do with it all.
We are so bombarded with stimuli that we can't focus on anything. We
feel scattered. We are, to put it simply, stressed.

For both lack of energy and stress, attention is a good corrective

prescription.

Quotations

The quality of one's life depends on the quality of attention. Whatever

you pay attention to will grow more important in your life. — Deepak
Chopra in Ageless Body, Timeless Mind

When you gaze at an object, you bring blessing to it. For through
contemplation, you know that it is absolutely nothing without the
divinity that permeates it. By means of this awareness, you draw greater
vitality to that object from the divine source of life. — Dov Baer of
Mezritch quoted in The Temple in the House by Anthony Lawlor

Just being awake, alert, attentive is no easy matter. I think it is the

greatest spiritual challenge that we face. — Diana L. Eck in Encountering
God
Emotions respond immediately to the truth of things. They are the most
alert form of attention. — James Hillman quoted in Shadows of the
Heart by James D. and Evelyn E. Whitehead

There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we
are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to pay attention to the
story. — Linda Hogan quoted in Listening to the Land edited by Derrick
Jensen

To see the preciousness of all things, we must bring our full attention to
life. Spiritual practice can bring us to this awareness without a trip to
space. — Jack Kornfield in A Path With Heart

An Apache trained acquaintance of mine used to throw his head back,

laugh into the sky and say — "What will you buy with your attention
today?" — Scout Cloud Lee in The Circle Is Sacred

Attention is the intention to live without reservation in the here-and-

now. — Timothy Miller in How To Want What You Have

For lack of attention a thousand forms of loveliness elude us every day.

— Evelyn Underhill

Just remember that those things that get attention flourish. — Victoria
Moran in Shelter for the Spirit

Permit me to say without reservation that if all people were attentive, if

they would undertake to be attentive every moment of their lives, they
would discover the world anew. They would suddenly see that the world
is entirely different from what they had believed it to be. — Jacques
Lusseyran in Against the Pollution of the I
Book Excerpts

From Passion for God: Theology in Two Voices by

Jurgen Moltmann and Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel

This paperback contains six essays by theologians

Jurgen Moltmann and his wife Elisabeth Moltmann-
Wendel. In a piece titled "Praying With Open Eyes,"
Jurgen Moltmann salutes the spiritual practice of
attention.

"Christian faith is not blind faith. It is the wakeful expectation of God,

which touches all the senses. The early Christians prayed standing up,
looking up, with outstretched arms and wide-open eyes, ready to walk or
to leap forward. We can see this from the pictures in the catacombs in
Rome. Their posture reflects tense expectation, not quiet heart
searching. We do not watch just because of the dangers that threaten us.
We are expecting the salvation of the world. We are watching for God's
advent. With tense attention, we open all our senses for the coming of
God into our lives, into our society, to this earth. . . .

"To go through life with eyes open for God, to see Christ in oppressed
and unimportant people — that is what praying and watching is all about.
We believe so that we can see, not so that we can shut our eyes to the
world. We believe so that we can see — and can endure what we see.

"To sum up what watching and praying is about, we would have to say
that it is about an attentive life. Good will and helpfulness are fine, but
they are not enough. Attentiveness is necessary, so that we do the right
thing at the right time in the right place.”
Teaching Stories

"Our difficult and very urgent task is to accept the

truth that nature is not primarily a property to be
possessed, but a gift to be received with admiration
and gratitude. Only when we make a deep bow to
the rivers, oceans, hills, and mountains that offer
us a home, only then can they become transparent
and reveal to us their real meaning.

"A friend once gave me a beautiful photograph of a

water lily. I asked him how he had been able to take such a splendid
picture. With a smile he said, 'Well, I had to be very patient and very
attentive. It was only after a few hours of compliments that the lily was
willing to let me take her picture.' "

from Clowning in Rome: Reflections on Solitude, Celibacy, Prayer, and

Contemplation by Henri J. M. Nouwen

To Practice: Try this approach to your next photographic subject in

nature, and see how it affects the picture.
Beauty

Enhances:
Simplicity, Pleasure

Balances/Counters:
Clutter, Habitual Life

The Basic Practice

The Navaho blessing "May you walk in beauty" catches the essence of this
spiritual practice. Beauty is both a path you travel and what surrounds
you on the path. In the splendor of the Creation, we see its outer forms.
In morality and benevolence, we recognize its inner expressions.

Start this practice with the assumption that beauty is everywhere just
waiting for you to notice it. Allow yourself to feel its effect upon your
soul. Some experiences will stop you in your tracks and take your breath
away. Others will be more subtle but equally sublime. Then make your
actions reflections of the beauty all around you.

Why This Practice May Be For You

Clutter gets in the way of beauty. If we have too many things and tasks
in front of us, we may not notice what is beautiful about them. The
contrast is simplicity; by paring away excesses, we make an opening for
splendor.
Routine and rigid thinking also restrict our appreciation of beauty. If we
are stuck in a rut, we never discover the refreshment waiting just around
the corners of our daily schedule. If we have a narrow understanding of
aesthetics, we are limited in our ability to recognize beauty's varied
manifestations.

Beauty is startling, stimulating, and soothing. Try this practice when you
need to be pulled out of your habitual way of seeing and being. Its
cultivation produces pleasure.

Quotations

The eye that sees nobility and beauty in what another would regard as
ordinary is the eye of prayer. — Wendy Beckett in The Gaze of Love

Even the common articles made for daily use become endowed with
beauty when they are loved. — Soetsu Yanagi quoted in The Temple in
the House by Anthony Lawlor

The only lasting beauty is the beauty of the heart. — Jelaluddin Rumi

The Buddha taught that morality is the true beauty of a human being,
not one's physical appearance or outer adornments. — Joseph Goldstein
in Transforming the Mind, Healing the World

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty

is God's handwriting. — Ralph Waldo Emerson quoted in To See the
World in a Grain of Sand edited by Caesar Johnson

A spontaneous act of generosity, performed with unselfish grace is an

example of moral beauty, as are certain acts of courage; genuine
modesty is a possible example, as is selfless love. Some people appear to
possess moral beauty as others possess physical beauty. Although moral
beauty may be a natural gift, it is nevertheless more likely to emerge
and flourish in societies that appreciate and encourage it. — Yi-Fu Tuan
in Passing Strange and Wonderful

Whenever I experience something beautiful, I am with Soul. That

moment of inward breath, that pause and awareness of "how beautiful
this is" is a prayer of appreciation, a moment of gratitude in which I
behold beauty and am one with it. I have come to appreciate that having
an aesthetic eye takes me effortlessly into soul. — Jean Shinoda Bolen in
Handbook for the Soul edited by Richard Carlson

Beauty saves. Beauty heals. Beauty motivates. Beauty unites. Beauty

returns us to our origins, and here lies the ultimate act of saving, of
healing, of overcoming dualism. Beauty allows us to forget the pain and
dwell on the joy. — Matthew Fox in Original Blessing

To recognize, appreciate, or create beauty is to bring gladness into life.

— Paul Brunton quoted in Meditations for People in Crisis edited by Sam
and Leslie Cohen

It's the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the
beauty around us. — Joan Chittister in The Psalms

Show me the goodness, the beauty, the kindness in everyone I meet. —

Rebbe Nachman of Breslov in The Gentle Weapon

The names of God for trying to see beauty where it may seem hidden are
ya Jemal (beauty) and ya Latif (subtle). As you repeat these phrases, you
cultivate within your heart the emotional sensitivity to the subtle beauty
that transpires behind what appears to be ugly or repulsive. — Pir
Vilayat Inayat in Awakening: A Sufi Experience
This world is nothing more than
Beauty's chance to show Herself.
And what are we? —
Nothing more than Beauty's chance to see Herself.
For if Beauty were not seeking Herself,
we would not exist.
— Ghalib quoted in The Inner Treasure by Jonathan Star

The soul's beauty is harder to see than beauty of the body. — Aristotle
quoted in The Force of Character by James Hillman

The infinite beauty of God is constantly being discovered anew. —

Gregory of Nyssa quoted in God Hunger by John Kirvan

There is really no good English translation for adab. It means behaving

well or good etiquette. It is acting with heedfulness, beauty, refinement,
graciousness, and respect for others. The Koran teaches us the
importance of acting beautifully. "Do what is beautiful. God loves those
who do what is beautiful." (2:195) — Robert Frager in Heart, Self, & Soul

Book Excerpts

From Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding

Your Way Through Life's Ordeals by Thomas Moore

In his twelfth book, Thomas Moore explores the

transforming powers of a dark night of the soul. In
this excerpt, he explains how the spiritual practice of
beauty can be an avenue for inner transformation.
"Beauty feeds the soul, wakens it, and brings it to life as nothing else
can. Beauty is a deep-seated reaction to some meaningful and stunning
presentation of life. It stops you and gives you an instant promise of
pleasure. But if you have no soul, you won't even see the beautiful in the
thick layers of your practicality and in the density of your own ego. All
your senses and your full imagination have to be alert when beauty
makes its appearance. If you miss it, it is like going without food. . . .

"Beauty is to the soul what truth and fact are to the mind. The beauty of
a thing is its depth and meaning being revealed. To perceive that beauty,
you need an eye for both appearances and for the invisible radiance of a
thing. You also need the capacity to be affected. But many people walk
through life defended against all positive influences. They are not open
to the invitations and messages coming at them at every turn. They
wonder why life feels empty and meaningless, when the problem is not
the absence of meaning but their blindness and deafness to it. . . .

"The discovery of your own beauty — and I don't mean this sentimentally
— is the foundation of well-being. Your beauty is complex. It is not all
good and wholesome. It is not a superficial thing but is the very
substance of your being. Truly beautiful people are not necessarily
physically healthy, emotionally together, easy to get along with, or
productive and successful. Beauty usually requires some imperfection,
transgression, or lacuna. The whole of your being, the good and the bad,
is the stuff out of which your beauty makes an appearance. A lover may
see it. A parent may embrace it. A friend may struggle with it but love
it. . . .

"Beauty nurtures the soul by serving the spirit. Beauty takes you out of
your cramped, merely personal worries and sets you down in a field of
eternity. The essence of spirituality is an enlargement of vision. The
experience may only last a moment, but in these matters a moment is
enough. You need a transcendent sense of things, not one that lets you
escape from your situation but one that gives you an added perspective.
In this, beauty and religion serve similar purposes, and so it's no wonder
that they are so often allied.”

Teaching Stories

"At one time, I lived in London and had a volunteer

job teaching 'poise and grooming' to girls from low-
income families in the city's East End. To my
amazement, most of these girls had never been out
of their neighborhood. The museums, theaters, and
pageantry that define their city for a tourist may as
well have been on the other side of the world. It
was obvious to me that it would be pretty silly to
teach 'poise and grooming' to kids who didn't know
what they were supposed to be poised for. So I changed the curriculum.
Five days a week for a month, we took field trips. We saw paintings at
the National Gallery and the costume collection at the Victoria and
Albert. We watched the Horse Guard change at Buckingham Palace and
the old guard shop at Harrod's. We smelled the flowers at Kew Gardens
and heard the vespers at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. I even negotiated a
'day of beauty' at Elizabeth Arden in which each girl received one of the
services. It wasn't that I thought these thirteen-year-olds really needed
facials or pedicures, but I knew they needed to be treated royally in a
lovely place.

"Other than that day at the spa, neither poise nor grooming was ever
mentioned. Even so, at the end of four weeks, the visible transformation
in these girls was such that I felt like Henry Higgins — only younger,
female, and American. Nothing had changed in my students' lives in any
concrete way, but they had had experiences that hinted at the scope and
wonder of the world. Their epiphany brought one for me: beauty rubs
off. You cannot stand face-to-face with a Rembrandt and walk away the
same person.

"I believe that when you surround yourself with beauty, a change in your
own energy patterns takes place."

from Lit from Within: Tending Your Soul for Lifelong Beauty by Victoria
Moran

Spiritual Exercises

Beautify your home. Start by clearing out any clutter and things you are
not using. Affirm your commitment to simplify your life by giving away or
discarding at least one excess possession. Then choose one area of the
house to give special attention. Perhaps you will clean and polish the
wood furnishings or scrub all the tiles. As you are working, admire the
textures, colors, and structure of each item.
CONNECTIONS
Enhances:
Holistic way of life

Balances/Counters:
Separations, Dualism

The Basic Practice

Separateness is an illusion. That's what we learn through the spiritual

practice of connections. Everything is interrelated — in time, space, and
our very being. Both religion and science reveal this truth — Hinduism's
image of Indra's net, Buddhism's understanding of interbeing, the
experiences of the mystics, the teachings of ecology and physics, even
the Internet.

One definition of spirituality is "the art of making connections." There are

certain givens: The one is made up of many. One thing always leads to
another. Everything is related to everything else. You practice
connections, then, by consciously tracing the links connecting you with
other beings. Any point is a good starting place — your family line, your
work, your back yard. Watch for the moments when the separations
disappear. And don't be shy about naming mystical experiences as such
when you experience them.
Why This Practice May Be For You

The practice of connections reinforces holistic thinking and our

awareness of how the spiritual, emotional, and mental aspects of our
being interpenetrate and nourish each other. It enables us to see the big
picture.

We need to engage in this practice when we have a tendency to

compartmentalize our experiences, to put them in neat little boxes
instead of seeing them as parts of a whole. This is a cultural as well as a
personal habit. The history of the world is plagued by dueling dualisms:
mind vs. body, humans vs. nature, God vs. the world, science vs.
religion, country vs. city, male vs. female. The spiritual practice of
connections erases such arbitrary and unnecessary distinctions.

Quotations

Make a bed for the children of other people in the place where your own
children sleep. — Moroccan folk saying quoted in Wisdom of the African
World edited by Reginald McKnight

Everything is integral and interacts with everything else. This means that
nothing is itself without everything else. There is a commonality, an
integrity, an intimacy of the universe with itself. — Thomas Berry quoted
in Listening to the Land by Derrick Jensen

Steven Foster once said to me that loneliness is the teacher of giving.

Aloneness teaches us how we are really connected to and interdependent
with everything. — Steven Foster quoted in The Fruitful Darkness by
Joan Halifax

Spiritual practice among Lakota peoples is grounded in the expression

"All my relations," which proclaims that spiritual activity is not only for
those immediately participating in it but for all beings everywhere. —
Joan Halifax in The Fruitful Darkness

I cannot exist without in some sense taking part in you, in the child I
once was, in the breeze stirring the down on my arm, in the child
starving far away, in the flashing round of the spiral nebula. — Catherine
Keller quoted in Lighting a Candle by Molly Young Brown

If everything is connected to everything else, then everyone is ultimately

responsible for everything. We can blame nothing on anyone else. The
more we comprehend our mutual interdependence, the more we fathom
the implications of our most trivial acts. We find ourselves within a
luminous organism of sacred responsibility. — Laurence Kushner in
Invisible Lines of Connection

If someone kills a butterfly, it could cause an earthquake in a galaxy a

trillion light-years away. — Madeleine L'Engle quoted in Suncatcher by
Carole Chase

Every drop of blood that falls in Tibet or Cambodia or Gallipoli or Iraq

lands upon our shoes and spatters the hem of our best suit. — Mark
Collins in On the Road to Emmaus

I tell them there are no backwaters. There is only one river, and we are
all in it. Wave your arms, and the ripples will eventually reach me. —
Scott Russell Sanders in Writing from the Center

As we become increasingly aware of our global interdependence as a

species, we can also deepen awareness of our spiritual
interconnectedness. We cannot live in total isolation. The crosscultural
communion of awakened souls may be a key to cocreating a sustainable
future and living in harmony with the earth. — Frances Vaughan in
Shadows of the Sacred

If we look deeply into the evolution of our species, we see that in former
times we have been a rock, a tree, and an animal. — Thich Nhat Hanh in
Going Home

We find God on the Internet because it binds us all as One. — Joshua

Hammerman in thelordismyshepherd.com

Everything that is in the heavens, on earth, and under the earth is

penetrated with connectedness, penetrated with relatedness. —
Hildegard of Bingen quoted in The Sun & Moon Over Assisi by Gerard
Thomas Straub

Book Excerpts

from Godwrestling Round 2: Ancient Wisdom,

Future Paths by Arthur Waskow

This book is a sequel to Arthur Waskow's 1978 classic

that set in motion the Jewish Renewal movement.
Here is an excerpt on the spiritual practice of
connections.

"If our hearts are filled with love, our minds with accurate planning, our
hands with steadiness and strength, our souls with openness, then any
act we do will be a mitzvah, will strengthen the great Web of all
connections, will make God more fully God. And any act of connection-
making that we do will enliven life.
"It is a mitzvah for each of us to face the dark and terrible shadows
within her/his own heart, and make sure they do not harm and terrify
another being; it is a m'chayeh to search out the sacred root of their
fearfulness, integrate it into our whole self, and so to clarify our hearts
that they can serve the One in truthfulness.

"It is a mitzvah for us to live in peace with all our brothers and sisters,
and a m'chayeh to weave their stories and our own into a great Torah of
wisdom.

"It is a mitzvah to tolerate the different strands of Jewish peoplehood,

and a m'chayeh to draw from each its own deep mitzvah to enhance the
new life-giving pattern of the Jewish people.

"It is a mitzvah to make sure the poor and the outcast get fed, and a
m'chayeh to make sure that all have the power to help shape the future
and make their own prosperity.

"It is a mitzvah to protect each living species and each pattern of the
chemistry of earth, and a m'chayeh to understand their intertwining and
celebrate the wholeness of all life.

"It is a mitzvah to dedicate our lives to shaping integrity within our

selves, or to nurturing love within a family, or to making peace and
justice in society, or to protecting the planetary life-web; it is a
m'chayeh to shape our lives so that we do all these.

"It is a mitzvah to expect messiah in our own lifetimes, to wait with utter
faithfulness, and a m'chayeh not just to wait but to walk each present
moment in a path of life that comes ever closer to the Messianic pattern.
"To experience Anokhi, I, in Its/My fullness, is to shatter all expectations
and assumptions, to connect us with the All and with the Whole, and to
fill all the deadly, deadening places in the world with life.

"We have lived long enough in the era when we understood the process of
Creation as Division: Dividing light from darkness, land from sea, plant
from animal, human from earth, man from woman. In that world, every
relationship between the separated beings has been a wrestle — close,
intimate, and yet a struggle.

"Let us enter the era when we can affirm these distinctions — and yet
Create a world by Connecting. The era when across each separation, our
beings can see more clearly what connects us, can take our differences
as part of the delightful music of the universe.

"Let us move from the Wrestle to a Dance."

Teaching Story

Congregational minister Dale Turner emphasizes

how our lives can be brightened by the practices
of wonder, gratitude, joy, listening, and, as this
story reveals, connections.

"Some years ago a telephone operator in a small

Cape Cod town received a daily call from a man
who asked the exact time. This went on for many
weeks. Finally the operator asked the caller why
he called every day requesting the right time. 'Because,' responded the
caller, 'I am the man responsible for blowing the whistle at noon each
day.'
" 'Well, that's mighty odd,' the operator replied, 'because every day,
exactly at noon. I set my clock by your whistle.'

"A simple story, but an accurate parable of life. We are dependent on

one another, and each life has more far-reaching effect on others than is
often ever realized."

from Different Seasons: Twelve Months of Wisdom and Inspiration by

Dale Turner

Spiritual Exercises

"We can't, as individuals, take care of every one of our own needs. We
always need help — from God, from friends and family, from colleagues,
and from others. When we try to do everything by ourselves, in fact, we
often burn out and miss much of the richness of life. God did not intend
for us to operate independently of one another. The sum of all of us
together is more magnificent, more wonderful, than any of the individual
parts.

"We, like the Israelites, can be grateful for the manna in our wilderness
— for the people who day by day care, offer support and encouragement,
and teach us how to live a rich, full life. We can be manna for others as
well. Accepting manna and being manna for others are gifts of God to us
and to each other. Partake of it and share it freely."

from One Like Jesus: Conversations on the Single Life by Debra K.

Farrington

To Practice: Find ways to be manna for others this week. Then give God
thanks for those who have played this role in your life.
DEVOTION
Enhances:
Self-discipline

Balances/Counters:
Lack of commitment

The Basic Practice

A devotional life is one lived in the presence of the Lord. The world's
religions tutor us in an amazing variety of ways to practice our devotion.
To name just a few: Sufis dance. Buddhists chant. Catholics pray with a
rosary. Protestants sing hymns. Orthodox Christians meditate on icons.
Hindus gather to receive blessings in temples. Jews wrap themselves in a
prayer shawl. Native Americans bring up the sun. Muslims make a
pilgrimage.

Whether our devotional practices are formal liturgies or informal

gestures, they recognize that everything is linked to the Divine. There
can be no bracketing of our existence into holy and unholy precincts.

Begin, then, by cultivating your own garden of devotion. Pick as many

seeds to plant as you desire. Water them with love. Be vigilant in your
caretaking. Add new plants to the garden for variety. And be happy
knowing that this garden pleases God.
Why This Practice May Be For You

Devotion is not something that is done once a week, just on religious

holidays, or only in response to a particular event in your life. Special
devotions may be called for at those times, but as a spiritual practice, it
needs to be part of your daily routine.

Devotion then helps you build self-discipline. Being constant in your

prayers prepares you for other disciplines needed in your life. On the
other hand, if you lack commitment and don't tend to follow through in
the long run, your devotional life will suffer as well. This practice needs
to be done regularly.

Quotations

The Sufis believe that every aspect of daily life has potential as a
devotional practice. Every bodily movement has its source in the divine.
Everything we do, everything seen or heard, tasted or touched, can be
undertaken as a devotional practice. This level of devotion brings us into
a new relationship with the ongoing creation as we realize that the
entire universe is dependent upon the creative energy that vitalizes each
and every moment. — David A. Cooper in Silence, Simplicity & Solitude

Devotion takes many forms: the solemnity and joy of prayer; the ecstasy
of song, poetry, or art; the intimate connection between individuals in
marriage, family, or community. It involves opening the heart fully to the
presence of love and beauty, which brings a compassionate and reverent
awareness of the Divine in all things. Through the lens of devotion, every
aspect of creation is seen as purposeful, and hence received in gratitude.
— LaVera C. Draisin quoted in Opening the Inner Gates edited by Edward
Hoffman

The element of labor remains associated with the word 'avodah. A

Hasidic master was asked about the young man who spent all his days in
intense and heartfelt prayer. "Shouldn't he do something?" a visitor
objected. "Surely he could do some work!" "But don't you see how hard he
is working? replied the rebbe. "He's drilling a hole in his heart!" — Arthur
Green in These Are the Words

Her garden is work because it is of devotion, undertaken with passion

and conviction, because it absorbs her, because it is a task or unrelenting
quest which cannot be satisfied. — Donald Hall in Life Work

Both piety and wisdom involve self-command, self-conquest, self-denial,

strength of will, and firmness of purpose. But though these qualities are
instrumental in the pursuit of piety, they are not its nature. It is the
regard for the transcendent, the devotion to God, that constitute its
essence. — Abraham J. Heschel in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual
Audacity

An essential aspect of puja for Hindus is communion with the Divine....

Most often that contact is facilitated through an image: an element of
nature, a sculpture, vessel, painting, or print. When the image is
consecrated at the time of its installation in a shrine or temple, the deity
is invited to invest the image with his or her cosmic energy. In the eyes
of most devotees, the icon then becomes the deity, its presence
reaffirmed by the daily rituals of honoring and invocation. — Stephen P.
Huyler in Meeting God
So do devotions wholeheartedly, with a pure heart. By devotions, we
mean chanting, making bows and prostrations, and presenting offerings.
People often, particularly when they come to dokusan, prostrate
mechanically. Some do it fast to get it over with so they can get on with
the dokusan. They don't realize the true significance of these devotions.
They aren't just formalities. They truly enrich and deepen our experience
of the present moment. — Philip Kapleau quoted in Awakening to Zen by
Polly Young-Eisendrath and Rafe Martin

Mysticism without devotion is like uncooked food, it can never be

assimilated. — Hazrat Inayat Khan in The Inner Life

True devotion and commitment are never made with the mind. These
qualities, which allow us to expand, to grow, and to bloom into our
potential, are developed through the heart and the spirit. — Jamie Sams
in Earth Medicine

For the person who is religiously or spiritually inclined, work even

becomes a vehicle for devotion, a way of utilizing one's gifts and talents
to serve others. — Marsha Sinetar in Do What You Love, the Money Will
Follow

The analogy of the building of an interior temple, a temple of the heart,

as a house for the Divine is a useful description of the work involved in
creating the inner life, a living spiritual life. — Regina Sara Ryan in
Praying Dangerously
Book Excerpts

from Leaping: Revelations and Epiphanies by

Brian Doyle

Brian Doyle's inimitable collection of essays on

revelations and epiphanies shine with light and
imaginative energy. Here he unpacks some of the
devotional meanings of the sign of the cross.

"Scholars trace the practice back as far as the year A.D. 110, by which
time it was already established as a common gesture among Christians —
most common, apparently, among those communities associated with St.
Paul. 'Its format is a simple geometry,' said the late Congregation of Holy
Cross theologian Rev. Jeffrey Sobosan. 'It traces out a cross in the
sequence of four points touched: head to chest, shoulder to shoulder.
The early Christians thought it was the way Jesus died, far more than the
way He lived prior to His arrest, that constituted the saving act whereby
He pleased God.' So those early Christian cults honored, in a simply
physical gesture, the geometric shape on which Christ gave his life for
us.

"It is a small miracle, perhaps, that this gesture has persisted unchanged
throughout many nations and centuries — but miracles are not unusual,
are they?
"Such a simple act, our hands cutting the air like the wings of birds,
fingers alighting gently on our bodies in memory of the body broken for
us:

" 'Father,' we say, touching our heads, the seats of our cerebrations, and
we think of the Maker, that vast incomprehensible Coherence stitching
everything together, and 'Son,' touching our hearts, and feeling the ache
and exhaustion of the Father's Son, the God-made-man, the gaunt dusty
tireless fellow who walked and talked endlessly through the hills of
Judea, who knew what would happen to him, who accepted it with
amazing grace, who died screaming so that we might live past death, and
'Holy,' touching the left shoulder, on which we carry hope, and 'Spirit,'
touching the right shoulder, on which we carry love, and the gesture is
done, hanging in the air like a memory, its line traced on our bodies as if
printed there by the thousands of times our hands have marked it. I make
it in the dark, over my sleeping children; I make it at dawn, staring at
the incredible world waking; I make it smiling, cheered by the
persistence of miracles; I make it sobbing over the corpse of a friend in a
wooden coffin, returned now to the Carpenter who made him.

"Simple, powerful, poignant, the sign of the cross is a mnemonic device

like the Mass, in which we sit down to a table with one another and
remember the Last Supper, or like a baptism, where we remember John
the Baptist's brawny arm pouring some of the Jordan River over Christ. So
we remember the central miracle and paradox of the faith that binds us
each to each: that we believe, against all evidence and sense, in life and
love and light, in the victory of those things over death and evil and
darkness.

"Such a ferocious and brave notion, to be hinted at by such a simple

motion, and the gesture itself lasting perhaps all of four seconds, if you
touch all the bases and don't rush. But simple as the sign of the cross is,
it carries a brave weight: it names the Trinity, celebrates the Creator,
and brings home all the power of faith to the brush of fingers on skin and
bone and belly. So do we, sometimes well and sometimes ill, labor to
bring home our belief in God's love to the stuff of our daily lives, the skin
and bone of this world — and the sign of the cross helps us to remember
that we have a Companion on the road."

Teaching Stories

"Recently a car mechanic told me this story: He was

depressed at work but stuck with his job because of
family responsibilities. Then he encountered a Sufi
teacher who said to him, 'Each time you turn the
ratchet as you repair a vehicle, speak the word Allah.'
The mechanic did so, and his whole life changed, the
whole relation with his work changed. 'Now,' he said,
'I love my work. I love cars. They are alive. It is a
mistake to think of animate versus inanimate. A car will tell you, if you
listen deeply enough, whether it wants to be repaired or whether it
wants simply to be left alone to die.' "

from Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Lessons for Transforming
Evil in Soul and Society by Matthew Fox

To Practice: Incorporate a mantra from your spiritual tradition into your

everyday labors.
Daily Cue, Reminder, Vow, Blessing

• The sound of a bell, a church chime, or the stroke of a clock is a cue

for me to pray.

• When I see a candle, I am reminded to focus my devotion on God.

• When I hear reports of war, famine, and other disasters, I vow to

remember all those who are suffering in my prayers.

• Blessed is the Beloved who can be worshipped and served through

devotion.
ENTHUSIASM
Enhances:
Energy

Balances/Counters:
Apathy, Boredom

The Basic Practice

The word enthusiasm is derived from the roots en — in or within — and

theos — God. It means having God within or being one with God. People
with this gift carry a special kind of energy. They bring warmth and
feeling to their relationships and vigor and freshness to their activities.

To practice enthusiasm, make others aware when you are excited about
something. Throw yourself into your projects. Be known for your
eagerness, your curiosity, your willingness to give it all you've got.
Proclaim your passions. Hold nothing back. Sing your heart out.

Why This Practice May Be For You

Enthusiasm is invigorating. It helps you get up and go. It is a good

prescription, then, when you are feeling lethargic and listless, when your
energy seems frozen.
Enthusiasm counterbalances apathy and boredom, two common blocks to
an engaged spiritual life. A sluggish spirit just doesn't care about
anything. The world isn't interesting enough; there's a dreary sameness to
all your activities.

When fatigue or another of these conditions has you dragging through

your days, when you find that you've replaced wonder with whatever, go
for enthusiasm. If you can't muster it from within, surround yourself with
enthusiastic people.

Quotations

Do not judge whether what you are doing is impressive or mediocre,

spiritual or mundane. Just do it with enthusiasm. Just give yourself to
whatever you do with this full knowledge: "God is within me. All actions
that I perform are an offering to Him." — Swami Chidvilasananda

It is important to energize our everyday practice and daily good works

with enthusiasm, without anyone else telling us to, but doing it for our
own sake. — The Dalai Lama

We approach craft with enthusiasm, with the desire to learn, the wish to
express something real in the concrete world of objects. — Carla
Needleman in The Work of Craft

There are people whose presence is encouraging. One of the most

beautiful gifts in the world is the gift of encouragement. When someone
encourages you, that person helps you over a threshold you might
otherwise never have crossed on your own. — John O'Donohue in Eternal
Echoes
Enthusiasm is the greatest power.
For one endowed with enthusiasm
nothing in this world is impossible.
— The Ramayana

Who are the happiest, richest people you know?... These are the people
who are living joyful, enthusiastic lives, regardless of their possessions or
lack of possessions. These people possess something more precious than
material goods. They possess a spark of God that radiates in all they do.
— Shoni Labowitz in Miraculous Living

Exuberance is the experience of things as ever new, and ever renewed in

God's ever-beginning Creation. The world is always amazing and fresh to
the religious heart, the heart of the fool certainly, which knows that
every day is the first day of Creation. — Bishop Seraphim Sigrist in
Theology of Wonder

Solitude is the nurse of enthusiasm; enthusiasm is the true part of genius.

— Isaac D'Israel quoted in The Wonders of Solitude edited by Dale Salwak

Mysticism without devotion is like uncooked food, it can never be

assimilated. — Hazrat Inayat Khan in The Inner Life

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. The way of life is
wonderful; it is by abandonment. — Ralph Waldo Emerson quoted in
Lighting a Candle by Molly Young Brown

Don't let your enthusiasms die, but treat them like bright and dim lights
on a car. When you're around people, maybe you should put your dims on
a little more. When you're alone, turn on the brights. The brights want to
search the land to see as far as they can. They have a fierce power to
penetrate. The dims are a bit more subdued but they seem to be more
proper and sensitive around others. — Jose Hobday in Simple Living

Book Excerpts

from Exuberance: The Passion for Life by Kay

Redfield Jamison

Kay Redfield Jamison has written a lively and

imaginative treatment of exuberance, an emotion
that has not been covered very widely in
psychological literature. Here is an excerpt on
exuberance, which we see as a kissing cousin of
enthusiasm.

"We have given sorrow many words, but a passion for life few. Yet it is
the infectious energies of exuberance that proclaim and disperse much of
what is marvelous in life. Exuberance carries us places we would not
otherwise go — across the savannah, to the moon, into the imagination —
and if we ourselves are not so exuberant we will, caught up in the
contagious joy of those who are, be inclined collectively to go yonder. By
its pleasures, exuberance lures us from our common places and quiet
moods; and — after the victory, the harvest, the discovery of a new idea
or an unfamiliar place — it gives ascendant reason to venture forth all
over again. Delight is its own reward, adventure its own pleasure.

"Exuberance is an abounding, ebullient, effervescent emotion. It is

kinetic and unrestrained, joyful, irrepressible. It is not happiness,
although they share a border. It is instead, at its core, a more restless,
billowing state. Certainly it is no lulling sense of contentment:
exuberance leaps, bubbles, and overflows, propels its energy through
troop and tribe. It spreads upward and outward, like pollen toted by
dancing bees, and in this carrying ideas are moved and actions taken. Yet
exuberance and joy are fragile matter. Bubbles burst; a wince of
disapproval can cut dead a whistle or abort a cartwheel. The exuberant
move above the horizon, exposed and vulnerable. . . .

"Exuberance, joy's more energetic relation, occupies an ancient region of

our mammalian selves, and one to which we owe in no small measure our
survival and triumphs. It is a material part of our pursuits — love, games,
hunting, war, exploration — and it is a vibrant force to signal victory,
proclaim a time to quicken, to draw together, to exult to celebrate.”

Teaching Stories

"Hildegard of Bingen, twelfth century mystic,

counseled her spiritual directees to be 'juicy people,'
folks who are so filled with wonder and curiosity,
with lusty appetites and high spirits, that they
embrace life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
with a burly, grinning bear hug. To be juicy is to be:
a fearlessly joyous optimist, a troublemaker
tirelessly afflicting the comfortable, a passionate
lover of good talk and tasty food, an anonymous prophet hovering over
the cosmological riddle, a frequent violator of the ordinance against
indecent exposure of the heart, and a guerilla in the insurrection against
Dream Molesters everywhere."

from Daybreak Within: Living in a Sacred World by Rich Heffern

Daily Cue, Reminder, Vow, Blessing

• Seeing sports fans cheering their team, or an audience clapping for a

performer, is a cue for me to practice enthusiasm.

• Looking up at the radiance of the stars, I am reminded to let my

enthusiasm for life shine brightly.

• Watching someone who obviously relishes what he or she is doing, I vow

to practice enthusiasm.

• Blessed is the Energy of Life who inspires us to be enthusiastic about all

that we do.
FAITH
Enhances:
Trust

Balances/Counters:
Hardened heart, Difficulties

The Basic Practice

Faith defined as an acceptance of certain religious doctrines is an

essential element in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Hinduism and
Buddhism, it is an attitude of devotion that opens a gateway to spiritual
practice.

In the broad scope of the spiritual life, we see faith not as something you
have but as something you are in — a relationship. It involves an
awareness of and an attunement to God's presence in our everyday
experiences.

Practicing faith, then, is like developing any relationship. You have to

give it time and attention. It requires you to see, hear, feel, and
constantly remember your partner — God. Have confidence in the
relationship's viability, even when you are facing mysteries, doubts, and
paradoxes. Trust in this faith, even to the point of staking your life on it.
Why This Practice May Be For You

Many people assume that the chief challenges to faith are disbelief and
doubt, but the real stumbling block to faith is resistance to God or the
hardened heart. In the Biblical traditions, the heart is used as an image
for the deeper self, the true and total person. The hard heart is not open
to the sacred. It is similar to eyes that do not see and ears that do not
hear.

Difficulties can be catalysts to faith. During a dark night of the soul,

sometimes all we can do is trust that this, too, will pass. Facing illness,
death, or the myriad other challenges in our lives, we are strengthened
by the knowledge that a Greater Power watches and waits with us. In the
long run, it's the relationship that matters.

Quotations

God does not demand that I be successful. God demands that I be

faithful. When facing God, results are not important. Faithfulness is what
is important. — Mother Teresa in Mother Teresa by Jose Luis Gonzalez-
Balado

Doubting is not a sin. Nor does it denote a lack of faith. Lack of faith is a
pure and simple disbelief. Doubting is an invitation to enter into the
mystery more deeply, to go beyond the superficial. — John Aurelio in
Returnings

So, when something out of the ordinary happens,

some event that brings reassurance
that our faith is trustworthy,
we welcome it with all our heart.
But the lesson is the same,
time after time:
ultimately
everything is going to be okay.
— Mitch Finley in Whispers of Love

The substance of the faith remains always the same, but the mode of its
expression changes. — Pope John XXIII quoted in A Human Search edited
by John Swindells

Belief in God can spread trust in life, maturity, broadmindedness,

tolerance, solidarity, creative social commitment. It can further spiritual
renewal, social reform and world peace. — Hans Kung in Credo

The way of faith is necessarily obscure. We drive by night. — Thomas

Merton quoted in Running to the Mountain by Jon Katz

Affirm your faith in yourself:

I believe that I am very important in God's eyes.
I believe that I can return, no matter how far I've strayed.
I believe that I have the inner strength to change.
I believe that I can become truly devoted and close to God.
— Rebbe Nachman of Breslov in The Empty Chair

Learning to trust — that is the great thing. You realize that you do have
to do your work, you have to provide what you can, but also you have to
learn to believe that Providence is going to provide all that you really
need. One learns to trust like that, day by day. Of course, it does not
mean that you just sit down and wait for things to happen. You have to
do something, and you do what you need to do, in the belief that
Providence is working in and through you, not that you alone are
responsible. — Bede Griffiths in A Human Search edited by John Swindells
The whole future of the Earth, as of religion, seems to me to depend on
the awakening of our faith in the future. — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
quoted in Spirit of Fire by Ursula King

Like a wild flower

in God's care
I put my worries away
trusting the One who holds me.
— Macrina Wiederkehr in The Song of the Seed

Nobody knows how the kindling flame of life and power leaps from one
life to another. What is the magic quality in a person which instantly
awakens faith? You listen to a hundred persons unmoved and unchanged:
you hear a few quiet words from the man with the kindling torch and you
suddenly discover what life means for you forevermore.
— Rufus Jones quoted in Rufus Jones: Essential Writings edited by Kerry
Walters

Faith transforms the earth into a paradise.

By it our hearts are raised with the joy of our nearness to heaven.
Every moment reveals God to us.
Faith is our light in this life.
— Jean Pierre de Caussade quoted in The Inner Treasure by Jonathan
Star

In Buddhism faith is nourished by understanding. The practice of looking

deeply helps you to understand better. As you understand better, your
faith grows. — Thich Nhat Hanh in Going Home
Book Excerpts

from Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest

Experience by Sharon Salzberg

Meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg melds incidents

from her life and Buddhist teachings to re-imagine
this important human faculty. Here she makes
distinctions between beliefs and faith.

"When we hold a belief too tightly, it is often

because we are afraid. We become rigid, and chastise others for
believing the wrong things without really listening to what they are
saying. We become defensive and resist opening our minds to new ideas
or perspectives. This doesn’t mean that all beliefs are accurate
reflections of the truth, but it does mean that we have to look at what’s
motivating our defensiveness. . . .

“With their assumptions of correctness, beliefs try to make a known out

of the unknown. They make presumptions about what is yet to come,
how it will be, what it will mean, and how it will affect us. Faith, on the
other hand, doesn't carve out reality according to our preconceptions and
desires. It doesn't decide how we are going to perceive something but
rather is the ability to move forward even without knowing. Faith, in
contrast to belief, is not a definition of reality, not a received answer,
but an active, open state that makes us willing to explore. While beliefs
come to us from outside — from another person or tradition or heritage —
faith comes from within, from our active participation in the process of
discovery. Writer Alan Watts summed up the difference simply and
pointedly as, 'Belief clings, faith lets go.''
Teaching Stories

Ronald Rolheiser's The Holy Longing presents a

rounded and revelatory understanding of faith
development and Christian spirituality, answering
some key questions along the way.

Why would God want to take on human flesh?

"There is a marvelous story told about a four-year-

old child who awoke one night frightened, convinced
that in the darkness around her there were all kinds of spooks and
monsters. Alone, she ran to her parents' bedroom. Her mother calmed
her down and, taking her by the hand, led her back to her own room,
where she put on a light and reassured the child with these words: 'You
needn't be afraid, you are not alone here. God is in the room with you.'
The child replied: 'I know that God is here, but I need someone in this
room who has some skin!' "

from The Holy Longing: The Search for Christian Spirituality by Ronald
Rolheiser

To Practice: Be an incarnation of God's loving and comforting presence

for those around you during this holy season.

Daily Cue, Reminder, Vow, Blessing

• Holding a rock in my hand is my cue to contemplate the solidness of my

faith.

• As I get ready for bed, I remember that sleep is a sign of trust in God.
• Feeling God's love for me expressed in the support of my family and
friends, I vow to be faithful to the Lord.

• Blessed is the Ancient of Days who through faith is in relationship with

us.
FORGIVENESS
Enhances:
Freedom

Balances/Counters:
Vengefulness

The Basic Practice

There are three kinds of forgiveness, all interrelated. There is self-

forgiveness, which enables us to release our guilt and perfectionism.
There is the forgiveness we extend to others and receive from them,
intimates and enemies alike. And there is the forgiveness of God that
assures us of our worth and strengthens us for this practice.

All the spiritual traditions raise up the value of forgiveness, but many
people still find it to be a nearly impossible ideal. Just start somewhere.
Look truthfully at one hurt you have not been able to forgive. Identify
any associated feelings you might have, such as anger, denial, guilt,
shame, or embarrassment. Imagine what it would be like to live without
feeling this offense. Then let it go.

Other steps may be necessary for healing — a confession of your

contribution to the conflict, making amends, changing behavior, a
commitment to the community — but giving up your claims for, and
sometimes against, yourself is where you have to begin.

Why This Practice May Be For You

We all know the obvious symptoms that could be relieved by forgiveness

— feeling so wounded that we want revenge, constant brooding over a
long list of petty grievances, feeling so guilty we don't know how to
approach someone we have offended, worry that the hurt could happen
again. Bitterness and stubbornness can also be signs that forgiveness is
called for, especially when these attitudes are associated with a need to
be recognized as the one who is right.

In contrast to these limiting behaviors, which usually erect walls between

ourselves and others, forgiveness is freeing. It means that we can move
out of our previous position and move on with our lives. Best of all, it
enables us to be reconciled with our neighbors and with God so that once
again we feel part of the greater community of the spiritual life.

Quotations

Without forgiveness, life is governed by an endless cycle of resentment

and retaliation. — Robert Assagioli quoted in Gospel Days by Joan
Chittister

Perhaps forgiveness is the last thing mentioned in the Creed because it is

the last thing learned in life. Perhaps none of us can understand the
forgiveness of God until we ourselves have learned to forgive. — Joan
Chittister in In Search of Belief
If you want to see the brave, look at those who can forgive. If you want
to see the heroic, look at those who can love in return for hatred. — The
Bhagavad Gita quoted in Legacy of the Heart by Wayne Muller

The practice of forgiveness is not only, or even primarily, a way of

dealing with guilt. Instead, its central goal is to reconcile, to restore
communion — with God, with one another, and with the whole creation.
— L. Gregory Jones in Practicing Our Faith edited by Dorothy C. Bass

Never forget that to forgive yourself is to release trapped energy that

could be doing good work in the world. — D. Patrick Miller

Forgiveness is something freely granted, whether earned or deserved;

something lovingly offered without thought of acknowledgment or
return. It is our way of mirroring the goodness in the heart of a person
rather than raising up the harshness of their actions....it allows us to live
in the sunlight of the present, not the darkness of the past. Forgiveness
alone, of all our human actions, opens up the world to the miracle of
infinite possibility. — Kent Nerburn in Make Me an Instrument of Your
Peace

The capacity to forgive is the capacity to let go of ego. — David Richo in

Shadow Dance

The whole witness of Jesus' life and death is to the unfathomable depths
of God's forgiveness. English poet and artist William Blake cites the
capacity of Jesus to forgive another, and to reenter vulnerably into the
deepest relation with another, as the strongest evidence of his being God
in the flesh. — Douglas V. Steere in Dimensions of Prayer

The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the

healing of the world. — Marianne Williamson in A Return to Love
Forgiveness seems to remain a theme waiting to be explored in depth in
our present age. This deep and extensive kind of loving of enemies, while
it has long roots in our tradition, seems to have become a theme of
special urgency in our contemporary world. — Wendy Wright in The
Rising

Forgiveness is a complex experience that changes an offended person's

spiritual feelings, emotions, thoughts, actions, and self-confidence level.
I believe learning to forgive the hurts and grudges of our life may be an
important step for us to feel more hopeful and spiritually connected and
less depressed. These changes improve our health and give us more
energy to create a better life for ourselves. They allow our bodies to
function in an optimal way. — Fred Luskin in Forgive for Good

Book Excerpts

from Calm Surrender: Walking the Path of

Forgiveness by Kent Nerburn

In this down-to-earth book on forgiveness, Kent

Nerburn sees it as the spiritual practice of love put
into action. In this passage, he confronts one of the
major dilemmas facing those who need to forgive.

"This is the dilemma that faces us all when we

decide to walk the difficult path of forgiveness. Are
we complicit in wrongdoing if we do not challenge those who wrong us?
Or are we contributing to the darkness in the world if we get caught up
in the web of heartlessness and cruelty that gave birth to the injustice?
"I don't know. And yet I must know. Somehow, I, you, each of us, must
find a way to respond to the cruelty and injustice in the world in a way
that doesn't empower those who harm others. At the same time, we must
avoid becoming ensnared by their anger and heartlessness.

"One of the great human wagers is whether we best achieve this by

shining a light of pure absolution into the darkness, trusting that the light
will draw others toward it, or whether we stand against the darkness
with equal force, and then try to flood the world with light once the
darkness is held at bay.

"In either case, though, one thing is certain: Forgiveness cannot be a

disengaged, pastel emotion. It is demanded in the bloodiest of human
circumstances, and it must stand against the strongest winds of human
rage and hate. To be a real virtue, engaged with the world around us, it
must be muscular, alive, and able to withstand the outrages and
inequities of inhuman and inhumane acts. It must be able to face the
dark side of the human condition.

"How we shape such forgiveness is one of the most crucial questions in

our lives. And, it is not easy. Sometimes we get so frustrated that we
don't think we can take it any more.

"But we can and we must; it is our human responsibility. Even though we

know that forgiveness, misused, or misunderstood, can become a tacit
partner in the wrongs around us, we also know that, properly applied, it
is the glue that holds the human family together. It is the way to bridge
the loneliness that too often surrounds us. We must find a way to build
that bridge, even if our hands are clumsy and the materials at our
command are flawed."
Teaching Stories

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin presents a rich smorgasbord

of wise counsel using illustrative material from
Jewish tradition and contemporary experiences. He
covers relationships, marriage and childrearing,
work, and moral issues. Here's a story from the
book.

"The great rabbinic sage Rabbi Israel Salanter

(1810-1883) was once spending the night at a
shoemaker's home. Late at night, Salanter saw the man still working by
the light of a flickering, almost extinguished candle.

"Rabbi Salanter went over to the man: 'Look how late it is; your candle is
about to go out. Why are you still working?'

"The shoemaker, undeterred by the rabbi's words, replied, 'As long as the
candle is burning, it is still possible to mend.'

"For weeks afterward, Rabbi Salanter was heard repeating the

shoemaker's words: 'As long as the candle is burning, it is still possible to
mend.'

"As long as there is life — as long as the candle is burning — we can

mend. We can reconcile with those from whom we've become estranged,
help make peace within our families, give charity, aid a friend in
financial straits to establish himself or herself in business, and work on
learning to express our anger fairly."

from The Book of Jewish Values: A Day-by-Day Guide to Ethical Living by

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin
To Practice: What mending must you attend to while the candle is still
burning?

Practice of the Day

Forgiveness is an embrace, across all barriers, against all odds, in

defiance of all that is mean and petty and vindictive and cruel in this
life.
— Kent Nerburn in Calm Surrender

To Practice This Thought: Embrace in your heart everyone you need to

forgive, including yourself.
GRACE
Enhances:
Receptivity, Surrender

Balances/Counters:
Shame, Need for control

The Basic Practice

Grace is a gift of God. Because it comes to us at God's initiative, there

are some things we can't do about grace. We can't earn it. We can't
control it. We don't have to deserve it.

If grace is out of your hands, so to speak, how do you engage in the

spiritual practice of grace? Accept that you are accepted. Practice
receiving. Receive objects, love, help. Notice when presents and
presence come to you without your effort.

Why This Practice May Be For You

Grace confounds certain very natural human tendencies. We want to

believe we are in control. We assume there are specific moves we can
take to ensure that we are rewarded. We expect God's gifts to be doled
out according to some recognizable plan.
But grace does not work that way. Instead, it teaches us to let go and let
God. Not only are we not in charge, we don't have to be. We just need to
stay open to receiving the sacred.

Receptivity, in turn, requires that we give up shame — those persistent

feelings that we are unworthy, that we don't deserve all that we have,
that we're not as good as people assume, that we've messed up, that our
whole life is a mistake. Grace doesn't listen to that litany. It isn't based
on a scorecard. Grace happens.

Quotations

When we open our hearts to each other we allow grace to enter. It is as

simple as that. And suffering — events that break open the heart — can
become the refiner's fire that leaves us fully open to the truth about love
and compassion. — Kathleen A. Brehony in Ordinary Grace

There is a power which inspires the heart, enlightens the mind, and
sanctifies human character. It is the power of Grace. — Paul Brunton
quoted in Meditations for People in Crisis edited by Sam and Leslie
Cohen

Grace can never be possessed but can only be received afresh again and
again. — Rudolf Bultmann

Grace is the kindling of the heart and the illuminating of the mind. —
John S. Dunne in The Music of Time

Community is another source of grace. In community we are meant to

grace one another; to be sources of grace; healers by way of grace. —
Matthew Fox in Confessions
Our own experiences of grace give an inchoate meaning to the stories of
our lives. They hint at purposes which exist beyond ourselves. — Andrew
M. Greeley in God in Popular Culture

In becoming grace, you start from a place of emptiness. When you empty
of expectations, you open to the wonders that happen in moments and
nanoseconds of revelation. With God's grace active in you, nothing can go
wrong. Every thought, word, and action, when joined with grace, will be
formless and serve goodness. — Shoni Labowitz in Miraculous Living

Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from
that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and
embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there. — Anne
Lamott in Traveling Mercies

Grace happens when we act with others on behalf of our world. —

Joanna Macy in Lighting a Candle by Molly Young Brown

Grace overcomes shame, not by uncovering an overlooked cache of

excellence in ourselves but simply by accepting us, the whole of us, with
no regard to our beauty or our ugliness, our virtue or our vices. We are
accepted wholesale. Accepted with no possibility of being rejected.
Accepted once and accepted forever. Accepted at the ultimate depth of
our being. — Lewis B. Smedes in Shame and Grace

You are seeking for secret ways of belonging to God, but there is only
one: making use of whatever God offers you. — Jean-Pierre de Caussade
quoted in Praying Dangerously by Regina Sara Ryan

Grace happens to me when I feel a surge of honest joy that makes me

glad to be alive in spite of valid reasons for feeling terrible. Grace
happens when I accept my wife's offer to begin again with me in love
after I have hurt her. It happens when I feel powerfully free to follow my
own conscience in spite of those who think I am either crazy or wicked.
Grace is the gift of feeling sure that our future, even our dying, is going
to turn out more splendidly than we dare imagine. Grace is the feeling of
hope. — Lewis B. Smedes in How Can It Be All Right When Everything Is
All Wrong?

In a flash of the eye,

laughter, or a tear.
No effort needed, no self to seek,
just grace remains.
— Svein Myreng in Plum Poems

Grace is uncontrollable, arbitrary to our senses, apparently unmerited.

It's utterly free, ferociously strong, about about as mysterious a thing as
you could imagine. First rule of grace: grace rules. — Brian Doyle quoted
in The Best Spiritual Writing 2001 edited by Philip Zaleski

We think of grace arriving like an ambulance, just-in-time delivery, an

invisible divine cavalry cresting a hill of troubles, a bolt of jazz from the
glittering horn of the Creator, but maybe it lives in us and is activated by
illness of the spirit. Maybe we're loaded with grace. Maybe we're stuffed
with the stuff. Maybe it's stitched into our DNA, a fifth ingredient in the
deoxyribonucleic acidic soup. — Brian Doyle quoted in The Best Spiritual
Writing 2001 edited by Philip Zaleski

We take whatever confessionals we can find. It is somehow reassuring

that redemption can come in a ratty, dog-eared old mystery paperback
as well as in the glory and grandeur of a gothic cathedral. God is not
afraid to be present even in a fiction that wallows in sin. — Stephen
Kendrick in Holy Clues
All communities of faith mediate the grace of God in a very mixed way.
Sin, pettiness, and betrayal are always found alongside grace, sanctity,
and fidelity. — Ronald Rolheiser in The Holy Longing

Come, not to discuss

the words of others,
But to listen . . .
For in the sacredness of every moment
Divine Grace is telling you alone
all that is required.
— Jean Pierre de Caussade quoted in The Inner Treasure by Jonathan
Star

God gives his gifts where he finds the vessel empty enough to receive
them. — C. S. Lewis quoted in God Hunger by John Kirvan

The creative life of God is always coming, always entering to refresh and
enhance our lives. — Evelyn Underhill quoted in God Hunger by John
Kirvan

God is ready to give great things when we are ready...to give up

everything. — Meister Eckhart quoted in The Sun & Moon Over Assisi by
Gerard Thomas Straub

Grace teaches truth, monitors the monastery, illumines the soul,

produces tears. — Thomas a Kempis quoted in The Imitation of Christ
edited by William Griffin
Book Excerpts

from God is . . . by Sri Chinmoy

Indian guru Sri Chinmoy synthesizes his perspective on

the relationship between human beings and the
Source of life. Here is an excerpt on grace.

"God's Grace is like the rays of the sun. The sun is

always there, but what do we do? We get up late.
Instead of getting up a five-thirty or six o'clock, we
get up at eight or nine o'clock. Then we do not get the blessing of the
morning sun. And when we do get up, we keep the doors and windows all
shut and do not allow the sunlight to enter into our room.

"Similarly, God's Grace is constantly descending, but quite often we are

not allowing the Grace to enter into our system. We have kept barriers
between God's Grace and our own ignorance. Only if we keep our heart's
door wide open can God's Light enter into our existence. God's Light
means God's Grace. There is no difference between God's Grace and
God's Compassion-Light.

"Every day we have to empty our inner vessel and fill it with God's Peace,
Light and Bliss. We have to feel that God's Light is there all the time and
is more than willing to illumine us. Then only we will be able to utilize
God's Grace. Again, if we miss God's Grace, we should not be doomed to
disappointment. Today we have not allowed the sunlight to enter into
our room, but tomorrow again the sun will be there. If today we have not
allowed God's Grace to enter into us due to our ignorance, no harm.
Tomorrow we will definitely be prepared for God's Light to enter into us."
Teaching Stories

Thomas H. Green examines the art of floating

(relax, let go, hang loose) as a metaphor for
faithfully resting in the grace of God.

"The image of floating has come to dominate my

thinking about prayer more and more, because it
seems to capture perfectly for me the goal
towards which the whole purifying process of the
dark night is leading us. If we want to reach a goal
that we ourselves have chosen, we would be well
advised to learn to swim rather than to float. The swimmer is intensely
active and is going someplace; the floater yields to the flow of the water
and savors fully being where he is. He, too, is going someplace, but that
is the concern of the current which carries him. His major decision is
whether to trust the tide. If he does not, he must guide himself by his
swimming strokes; if he does, he can relax and surrender himself totally
to the tide, and live fully the present moment.

"The problem is that we must decide whether we want to swim or to

float."

from When the Well Runs Dry: Prayer Beyond the Beginnings by Thomas
H. Green

Imagery Exercise

Denise Levertov’s poem “The Avowal, which appears on p. 252 in

Spiritual Literacy, is one of our favorite descriptions of grace. Here is an
exercise based on its images.
Breathe out three times. See yourself as a swimmer floating face up in
the water. Sense how the water holds you without your effort.

Breathe out one time. See yourself as a hawk soaring above the earth.
Sense how the air holds you without your effort.

Breathe out one time. See and sense yourself in freefall, floating into the
Creator’s deep embrace. Know that you are being surrounded by the
light of grace. Then open your eyes.
GRATITUDE
Enhances:
Satisfaction

Balances/Counters:
Greed, Entitlement

The Basic Practice

The spiritual practice of gratitude has been called a state of mind and a
way of life. But we prefer to think of it as a grammar — an underlying
structure that helps us construct and make sense out of our lives. The
rules of this grammar cover all our activities. Its syntax reveals a system
of relationships linking us to the divine and to every other part of the
creation.

To learn the grammar of gratitude, practice saying "thank you" for happy
and challenging experiences, for people, animals, things, art, memories,
dreams. Count your blessings, and praise God. Utter blessings, and
express your appreciation to everything and everyone you encounter. By
blessing, we are blessed.
Why This Practice May Be For You

The continuum of words related to gratitude go from greed and jealousy;

through taking things for granted and feeling entitled; to appreciation,
acceptance, and satisfaction. The practice of gratitude would be an
appropriate prescription whichever one of the above describes your
attitudes.

The rules of the grammar of gratitude are not as simple as they seem at
first glance, however. For example, often instead of rejoicing in what we
have, we greedily want something more, better, or different. We can't
be grateful because we are making comparisons and coveting other
possibilities.

When this happens on a personal level, when it's our ego that is
dissatisfied, then we are ungrateful. But when we want something more,
better, or different for the glory of God or for the benefit of the
community, this greed may be a manifestation of our devotion, our love,
or our yearning for justice. And then we are grateful for these
commitments.

Quotations

Joy is the simplest form of gratitude. — Karl Barth in Joy by Beverly

Elaine Eanes

Think of something for which you are grateful today. Say thanks.
I am grateful to You, Giver and Sustainer of life, for having granted me
another day of life. Your love and faith in me is truly overwhelming. —
Rabbi Terry Bookman in The Busy Soul
The generosity of God in sharing the goodness of creation with us can
elicit only one possible response — that of gratitude. — Esther de Waal
quoted in To Everything a Season by Bonnie Thurston

I think the dying pray at the last not "please," but "thank you," as a guest
thanks his host at the door. — Annie Dillard quoted in Super, Natural
Christians by Sallie McFague

Continuous practice, day after day, is the most appropriate way of

expressing gratitude. This means that you practice continuously, without
wasting a single day of your life, without using it for your own sake. Why
is it so? Your life is a fortunate outcome of the continuous practice of the
past. You should express your gratitude immediately. — Zen Master
Dogen quoted in Enlightenment Unfolds edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi

Gratitude is the state of mind of thankfulness. As it is cultivated, we

experience an increase in our "sympathetic joy," our happiness at
another's happiness. Just as in the cultivation of compassion, we may
feel the pain of others, so we may begin to feel their joy as well. And it
doesn't stop there. — Stephen Levine in A Year to Live

Gratitude is the intention to count-your-blessings every day, every

minute, while avoiding, whenever possible, the belief that you need or
deserve different circumstances. — Timothy Miller in How To Want What
You Have

Notice when you say or someone near you says "Thank you." Think of
those two words as a signpost to the spiritual world. — Lewis Richmond
in Work as a Spiritual Practice
Sanctity has to do with gratitude. To be a saint is to be fueled by
gratitude, nothing more and nothing less. — Ronald Rolheiser in The Holy
Longing

Look closely and you will find that people are happy because they are
grateful. The opposite of gratefulness is just taking everything for
granted. — David Steindl-Rast in The Music of Silence

Another reason we turn logical with our gratitude is that it is terrifying.

The wonder of a moment in which there is nothing but an upwelling of
simple happiness is utterly awesome. Gratitude is so close to the bone of
life, pure and true, that it instantly stops the rational mind, and all its
planning and plotting. That kind of let go is fiercely threatening. I mean,
where might such gratitude end? — Regina Sara Ryan in Praying
Dangerously

Any moment that opens us up to the reality that life is good is a parable
of the supreme end for which we were made. — Lewis B. Smedes in How
Can It Be All Right When Everything Is All Wrong?

For many of us, the computer is the means by which we earn a living. To
give it a nod, then, is a way of thanking the tool for what it provides in
life. It helps put bread on the table and a roof overhead. It gives us work
and pleasure, exercises our minds, brings us information, connects us
with other people. It is a partner helping us achieve our goals. Nodding
also thanks the unseen hands and minds who helped create our machine.
— Philip Toshio Sudo in Zen Computer

It is important not only to be grateful to others but also to be grateful

for others. We need to cultivate a gratitude for others' giftedness in the
same way that we appreciate a beautiful sunset or a smile from a loved
one. Others always seem to have been given gifts in life that we desire,
and so it's easy to be envious. Riding sidesaddle with envy is a dangerous
practice: I would be happy if I had what he or she possesses. By contrast,
giving thanks constantly and in all circumstances liberates us from envy.
— Edward Hays in The Great Escape Manual

Gratitude is here presented as more than a feeling, a virtue, or an

experience; gratitude emerges as an attitude we can freely choose in
order to create a better life for ourselves and for others. The Nigerian
Hausa put it this way: Give thanks for a little and you will find a lot. —
David Steindl-Rast quoted in Words of Gratitude by Robert A. Emmons
and Joanna Hill

To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything He has given

us — and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His
love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense
graces from Him. Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never
unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder and to praise of
the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not
by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.
— Thomas Merton quoted in Words of Gratitude by Robert A. Emmons
and Joanna Hill

To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is

generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven. — Johannes
A. Gaertner quoted in Words of Gratitude by Robert A. Emmons and
Joanna Hill

The greatest thing is to give thanks for everything. He who has learned
this knows what it means to live. He has penetrated the whole mystery
of life: giving thanks for everything. — Albert Schweitzer quoted in
Words of Gratitude by Robert A. Emmons and Joanna Hill
There is a calmness to a life lived in Gratitude, a quiet joy. — Ralph H.
Blum quoted in Words of Gratitude by Robert A. Emmons and Joanna Hill

Book Excerpts

from The Haunt of Grace: Responses to the

Mystery of God's Presence by Ted Loder

Ted Loder's collection of sermons salute the

vitality of faith, hope, imagination, and freedom.
Check out this inspiring excerpt on the spiritual
practice of gratitude.

"What's enough? Countless times I've watched the

sun rise like God's tender mercy to gently lift the
dark blanket from the earth, and countless more times I've watched the
sun set in such a splendiferous farewell that it must reflect the fringe on
God's robe. I've seen the sky define blue and endless. I've watched rivers
run to the sea, full as life runs to God. I've felt the sea roll in on the
eternal note of mystery and assurance.

"I've scratched the ears of dogs, laughed at the ballet of cats. I've heard
the cry and gurgle of the newborn, played with children, rocked with
grandmothers, learned from hundreds of teachers, some of them
homeless, poor, and uneducated. I've been enlarged ten times squared by
writers from Shakespeare to Toni Morrison, and yet countless other
storytellers, some in delis and diners, taverns and buses, churches, curb
sides and prison cells.

"I have tasted bread and wine, hog dogs and caviar, somehow in the
alchemy of need and gift and joy, all made holy as God's own overflowing
banquet. I've been loved and forgiven beyond all deserving, and all
breath to tell of it, by family and friends and God.

"I've been shaken, changed, and blessed a thousand times — and still —
by the prophets, and by Christ. I've felt the touch of God, each time
before I realized that's what it was. I've been shrunk and stretched at the
same time by the scatter of stars and found North in one of them. I've
experienced the loneliness of freedom and being human and having hard
choices. I've known the thrill of small triumphs, the instruction of painful
defeats, and so the amazement of being part of the incredible human
pilgrimage from Adam and Eve to the twenty-first century. I've shared in
the cantankerous yet remarkable family of faith called the church. I'm
conscious of being conscious and alive. And all that's just for starters.

"How much does it take to praise God? I have a couple of trips around the
Milky Way past enough for that, no matter if I never receive another
thing. So I best get on with it . . . and praise God that I can."

Teaching Stories

from Small Graces: The Quiet Gifts of Everyday

Life by Kent Nerburn

Kent Nerburn salutes the beauty, the grandeur,

and the meaning of ordinary moments and
experiences. Here is an excerpt on the spiritual
practice of gratitude or counting out blessings for
all the small graces.

"Night is closing in. It is time for sleep.

"I have walked a quiet path today. I have done no great good, no great
harm. I might have wished for more — some dramatic occurrence,
something memorable. But there was no more. This was the day I was
given, and I have tried to meet it with a humble heart.

"How little it seems. We seek perfection in our days, always wanting

more for ourselves and our lives, and striving for goals unattainable. We
live between the vast infinites of past and future in the thin shaft of light
we call 'today.' And yet today is never enough.

"Where does it come from, this strange unquenchable human urge for
'more' that is both our blessing and our curse? It has caused us to lift our
eyes to the heavens and thread together pieces of the universe until we
can glimpse a shadow of the divine creation. Yet to gain this knowledge,
we have sometimes lost the mystery of a cloud, the beauty of a garden,
the joy of a single step.

"We must learn to value the small as well as the great.

"In the book of Micah, the prophet says, 'And what does the Lord require
of you but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your
God?'

"Confucius told his followers, 'Bring peace to the old, have trust in your
friends, and cherish the young.'

"Do we really need much more than this? To honor the dawn. To visit a
garden. To talk to a friend. To contemplate a cloud. To cherish a meal.
To bow our heads before the mystery of the day. Are these not enough?

"The world we shape is the world we touch — with our words, our
actions, our dreams.
"If we should be so lucky as to touch the lives of many, so be it. But if
our lot is no more than the setting of a table, or the tending of a garden,
or showing in a child a path in a wood, our lives are no less worthy.

"I crawl into my bed, feel the growing warmth of the covers, hear the
quiet rhythms of my wife's gently breathing.

"Outside, the wind blows softly, brushing a branch from the birch against
the house.

"To do justice. To love mercy. To walk humbly with our God.

"To bring peace to the old. To have trust in our friends. To cherish the
young.

"Sometimes, it seems, we ask too much. Sometimes we forget that the

small graces are enough."

Spiritual Exercises

"Day and night gifts keep pelting down on us. If we were aware of this,
gratefulness would overwhelm us. But we go through life in a daze. A
power failure makes us aware of what a gift electricity is; a sprained
ankle lets us appreciate walking as a gift, a sleepless night, sleep. How
much we are missing in life by noticing gifts only when we are suddenly
deprived of them! But this can be changed. We need some methodical
exercise in gratefulness. Years ago, I devised a method for myself which
has proved quite helpful. Every night I note in a pocket calendar one
thing for which I have never before been consciously thankful. Do you
think it is difficult to find a new reason for gratitude each day? Not just
one, but three and four and five pop into my mind, some evenings. It is
hard to imagine how long I would have to live to exhaust the supply."
from A Listening Heart: The Spirituality of Sacred Sensuousness by
Brother David Steindl-Rast
PLAY
Enhances:
Free-spiritedness

Balances/Counters:
Earnestness, Predictability

The Basic Practice

Coyote. Nasrudin. St. Francis and his order of Jesters of the Lord. Zen
masters. Taoist sages. Hasidic storytellers. Clowns and performance
artists. Such prophets — and all the spiritual traditions have them —
encourage us not to take ourselves too seriously. They say that what we
know is not worth knowing, and what's worth knowing cannot be known
through our ways. To our sensible selves, their actions seem silly,
shameless, even shocking. But they have an important role in the
spiritual life. They carry the banner for the spiritual practice of play.

Play is the exuberant expression of our being. It is at the heart of our

creativity, our sexuality, and our most carefree moments of devotion. It
helps us live with absurdity, paradox, and mystery. It feeds our joy and
wonder. It keeps our search for meaning down to earth.

Practice play by doing things on the spur of the moment. Take time out
to experiment, to try on different parts, to relax. Laugh heartily at
jokes, situations, and yourself. Remember, laughter heals body, mind,
and soul, and by extension, communities.
Why This Practice May Be For You

Most of us don't play enough. We're either too "busy," a code word for
workaholism, or we're too serious, mistaking earnestness for
accomplishment. We're predictable, too, equating free-spiritedness with
irresponsibility. The best treatment for these conditions is play. We need
to lighten up.

But there is also a shadow side of play. Sometimes we get so involved in

role playing and just having a good time that we never reveal our true
selves. Then we need the company of other fools to point out the folly of
our foolishness.

Quotations

In rare moments of deep play, we can lay aside our sense of self, shed
time's continuum, ignore pain, and sit quietly in the absolute present,
watching the world's ordinary miracles. No mind or heart hobbles. No
analyzing or explaining. No questing for logic. No promises. No goals. No
relationships. No worry. One is completely open to whatever drama may
unfold. — Diane Ackerman in Deep Play

To play is to listen to the imperative inner force that wants to take form
and be acted out without reason. It is the joyful, spontaneous expression
of one's self. The inner force materializes the feeling and perception
without planning or effort. That is what play is. — Michelle Cassou and
Stewart Cubley in Life, Paint and Passion

It is a happy talent to know how to play. — Ralph Waldo Emerson quoted

in Joy by Beverly Elaine Eanes

There is a mystic in every one of us, yearning to play again in the

universe. — Matthew Fox in Wrestling with the Prophets

The comic spirit masquerades in all things we say and do. We are each a
clown and do not need to put on a white face. — James Hillman

Laughter is a holy thing. It is as sacred as music and silence and

solemnity, maybe more sacred. Laughter is like a prayer, like a bridge
over which creatures tiptoe to meet each other. Laughter is like mercy;
it heals. When you can laugh at yourself, you are free. — Ted Loder
Play exists for its own sake. Play is for the moment; it is not hurried,
even when the pace is fast and timing seems important. When we play,
we also celebrate holy uselessness. Like the calf frolicking in the
meadow, we need no pretense or excuses. Work is productive; play, in
its disinterestedness and self-forgetting, can be fruitful. — Margaret
Guenther in Toward Holy Ground

When we play, we sense no limitations. In fact, when we are playing, we

are usually unaware of ourselves. Self-observation goes out the window.
We forget all those past lessons of life, forget our potential foolishness,
forget ourselves. We immerse ourselves in the act of play. And we
become free. — Lenore Terr in Beyond Love and Work

Imaginative play is a key that opens the doors of intuition. — Frances E.

Vaughan in Awakening Intuition

It is interesting that Hindus, when they speak of the creation of the

universe, do not call it the work of God, they call it the play of God, the
Vishnu-lila, lila meaning "play." And they look upon the whole
manifestation of all the universes as a play, as a sport, as a kind of dance
— lila perhaps being somewhat related to our word lilt. — Alan Watts in
Zen and the Beat Way

Be patient also with life itself. those who love life are tolerant of its ups
and downs, its reversals and leaps forward. Those who love life enjoy
playing it by ear, engaging life without a printed score, simply flowing
with its melody. By keeping our agendas flexible and minimizing our
demands, life can be a melodic song. Whenever circumstances interrupt
the normal rhythm of life, those who cultivate patience and inner
freedom are able to improvise with a life situation like jazz musicians,
making up music as they go along. The emphasis in playing it by ear is on
playfulness. Those who use that gift of the Holy Spirit make their way
gracefully through life. — Edward Hays in The Great Escape Manual

A genuine sense of humor is having a light touch: not beating reality into
the ground but appreciating reality with a light touch. The basis of
Shambhala vision is rediscovering that perfect and real sense of humor,
that light touch of appreciation. — Chopgyam Trungpa in The Essential
Chogyam Trungpa edited by Carolyn Rose Gimian
Book Excerpts

An Excerpt from The Soul of the Story: Meetings

with Remarkable People by Rabbi David Zeller

Rabbi David Zeller's encounters with people of

different spiritual traditions have deeply informed
his storytelling, teaching, and music. Here is an
excerpt on the spiritual play of God in Hinduism.

"The main form of entertainment for the people

here were plays called leela, with musical
accompaniment that acted out the main stories of
their religion. These were usually family
productions, with families carrying this on from generation to
generation. They started very young, playing simple instruments and
working with various props. Then they took on the major roles in the
play. As they got older, they became more accomplished as musicians or
got more involved with costumes and props; as that occurred, the elders
would become the directors and conductors. There were two productions
in town: one for the 'common' people, who flocked to these plays in
droves as we might go to the movies, and one for the spiritually
elevated, the gurus and priests of the community. I was privileged to be
invited to the latter.

"The play was beautiful, with its sets, costumes, music, and acting. It
centered on a heroine who was searching for her lover, who had
disappeared. It was a metaphor for each person looking for God, who is
hidden from us. She went everywhere, asking, 'Have you seen my
beloved?' Everyone replied that he or she hadn't seen him. I was
appreciating the play from an artistic perspective. But as I looked around
at the audience, I saw that they were all crying: they'd totally identified
with the woman's longing for her beloved. For me, this was excellent
entertainment; for them, it was reality. Once again, I was seeing that
there is a separate reality of God, and that every 'drama' and trauma in
our life is God's leela, God's cosmic play."
Teaching Stories

A Teaching Story from Sacred Journeys in A Modern World by Roger

Housden

In this travel book, Roger Housden recalls his visits to sacred sites around
the world. In Bursa, Turkey, he meets with some Sufis.

"That night we returned to the tekke of the Bursa shaikh. More zikrs were
sung, talks were given, there were readings from holy scripture. An
incredible sense of community and Old World courtesy. Uruch's two
daughters had joined us in Bursa, and at one point, while their father
was in the middle of some explanation, one of them, a ten-year-old,
went over to him and started rearranging his hair. All the while she
fiddled with his parting and tried to make his hair go the other way,
pushing his head this way and that, he carried on speaking as if nothing
was happening. I had never seen such consideration for the different
levels of reality. Fatima told me later that Sufis pay great attention to
what children do. They let them play as they like, looking for signs,
noticing which book they pick up or where they open it, because children
are close still to the angelic realms."

To Practice: Notice the play of little children.

Daily Cue, Reminder, Vow, Blessing

• Hearing someone laugh is my cue to practice play.

• A swing set reminds me that all ground is playground.

• Whenever I participate in a game, I vow to make my play more

cooperative and less competitive.

• Blessed is the Giver of Life who has provided play as a way to celebrate
the lightness of our being.
HOSPITALITY
Enhances:
Tolerance

Balances/Counters:
Hostility/Criticalness

The Basic Practice

We are practicing hospitality when we welcome guests — including

strangers and enemies — into our lives with graciousness. An open house
reveals certain things about us: we are well-disposed toward others, we
focus on the positive, and we believe the universe is basically a friendly
place. Sometimes hospitality requires that we cross boundaries and
dismantle some of the barriers erected in our society to keep "the other"
out. Sometimes it means entertaining ideas that might be alien to us.

To be hospitable, you need to accept pluralism as a natural condition in

the world. Celebrate the diversity of the Creation. One particularly
valuable spin-off of hospitality is inter-religious dialogue. Spirit speaks in
many languages, and this spiritual practice helps us receive these
multiple messages.
Why This Practice May Be For You

Hospitality and hostility are both derived from the same word root — but
they couldn't be more different. Whereas hospitality is about welcoming
all, hostility thrives on insider/outsider conflicts. Practice the former to
increase your tolerance of the various groups in our society and their
distinctive lifestyles.

On an interpersonal level, hospitality is a good prescription to balance a

tendency to be critical of and unaccommodating to others. People who
are distrustful of the world, who become fearful and paranoid when
strangers approach, or who are suspicious of ideas unlike their own will
also benefit from this practice.

Quotations

Hospitality invites to prayer before it checks credentials, welcomes to

the table before administering the entrance exam. — Patrick Henry in
The Ironic Christian's Companion

A good guest is an example of owning less (not even what is yours is truly
yours) and thus having more. — Nilton Bonder in The Kabbalah of Money

I welcome every creature of the world with grace. — Hildegard of Bingen

quoted in Wrestling with the Prophets by Matthew Fox

Many years ago, a traveler came to a small town. The custom at those
times was to open your door to whoever comes as "God's guests," as they
were called. When someone knocked on your door and said "I am God's
guest," you were to invite him in, feed him, and give him a place to
sleep. — Sheikh Ragip Frager in Love Is the Wine
How should one live? Welcoming to all. — Mechtild of Magdeburg quoted
in Open Mind by Diane Mariechild

Hospitality is the virtue which allows us to break through the narrowness

of our own fears and to open our houses to the stranger, with the
intuition that salvation comes to us in the form of a tired traveler.
Hospitality makes anxious disciples into powerful witnesses, makes
suspicious owners into generous givers, and makes close-minded
sectarians into interested recipients of new ideas and insights. — Henri
J. M. Nouwen in Ministry and Spirituality

It is meant to offer an experience of hospitality, just as I believe that

God extends to human beings a divine and inexhaustible welcome: the
door is always open, the table always set, the arms flung wide,
outstretched. — Jane Redmont in When in Doubt, Sing

What do I mean "open to God"? I mean... a courageous and confident

hospitality expressed in all directions.... I mean an openness which is in
the deepest sense a creative and dynamic receptivity — the ability to
receive, to accept, to become. — Samuel H. Miller in Man the Believer

The German word for hospitality is Gastfreundschft which means

friendship for the guest.... It means the creation of a free space where
the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. —
Henri J. M. Nouwen

Let us welcome whatever comes our way — a dying friend, a reclusive

spider, a jewel-encrusted icon, the apothegms of Christ — and find in
these gifts the beauty of all created things and of our God, who breathes
them into being and upholds them through love. — Philip Zaleski in The
Recollected Heart
Many years ago, a traveler came to a small town. The custom at those
times was to open your door to whoever comes as "God's guests," as they
were called. When someone knocked on your door and said "I am God's
guest," you were to invite him in, feed him, and give him a place to
sleep. — Sheikh Ragip Frager, editor in Love Is the Wine

Book Excerpts

An Excerpt from Christianity Looks East:

Comparing the Spiritualities of John of the Cross
and Buddhaghosa by Peter Feldmeier

Peter Feldmeier presents a dialogue between St.

John of the Cross and the monk Bhadantacariya
Buddhaghosa. Here is an excerpt by Feldmeier on
the spiritual practice of hospitality which lies
behind all interreligious dialogue.

"Having reviewed stacks of literature about interreligious dialogue, I have

gleaned a fairly consistent, universally agreed-upon list of conditions and
intentions for authentic dialogue. The first condition is that it should be
without any ulterior or covert motives. In the past, the motive for
dialogue has often been either for conversion or to provide a forum for
one or both partners to demonstrate the superiority of their own
positions. Vineeth again: 'One cannot presuppose error as a condition of
dialogue.'

"Second, one must come to the table with essential openness. Such
openness refers to trying to understand not only what the partner says
conceptually, but also what the other means and the reality the other is
trying to convey. Because religious language is used differently in various
traditions, this kind of openness requires both an intellectual availability
to new ideas and theological paradigms as well as an intuitive openness
to the deep truth the other is trying to communicate. Another level of
openness is the ability to critically reassess one's own tradition. I must be
free enough to truly be challenged. And finally, one has to be open to
the process. This means not trying to predict or manipulate the dialogue
experience. Perhaps it will be at times disagreeable. So be it. If I enter
into a dialogue with another with the preconception that everything the
other says that does not correspond to what I believe is wrong, this
undermines the experience. In the same vein, if I enter into it with some
need to accept anything and everything offered as if it were necessarily
true, my openness is in the end dubious.

"Third, it is imperative that other religious traditions are respected in

their own right and on their own terms. This is perhaps one of the
central imperatives of interreligious dialogue: that traditions are taken
seriously for what they are in themselves. This means, for example, not
just regarding another faith as simply one of many manifestations of
some common spiritual or mystical essence. Respecting other traditions
in their own right also means being able to understand them and
reiterate their central beliefs, practices, and spiritual ethos in a way
that they themselves would recognize and agree with.

"Fourth, in the spirit of trust and openness, differences are not to be

eschewed. Rather, they can even be highlighted. If we do not exploit
differences between us, we can appreciate their power to challenge us
to rethink our own assumptions. In some past experiences of dialogue,
there seemed to be a covert need for some kind of uniformity or of
approaching all religious ways as equally valid or essentially the same.
This resulted in a contrived effort for respect. It is the exploration of
differences between religious worlds that allows one to criticize and
renew one's awareness of one's own tradition. Indeed, similarities
discovered can teach us much about what may be universal to authentic
religious paths. However, avoiding differences or playing them down is a
tragic and often practiced mistake. One could ask the question simply: If
there's nothing much different about us, why dialogue at all? It is often
the differences that make the very dialogue fruitful.

"The fifth criterion for good dialogue is more of a caveat: Make no hasty
determinations about the other, and keep in check the need to
overgeneralize or categorize the religious life of the other. We must
realize that we know and can legitimately say less than we might want to
about the other. Interreligious dialogue is holy ground with much
mystery, and we should walk barefoot and humbly.

"Virtually everyone agrees that dialogue can become a great forum for
internal growth and transformation. John Cobb writes, 'To hear another
articulation of a truth is to be changed by that truth.' And no matter how
one assesses whether or not that articulation should be appropriated,
Cobb echoes· a universalized point of view. It changes one to be engaged
with another, particularly if that other brings a whole new spiritual
perspective and practice.

"Another goal is that it could raise a critique to one's own religious life.
To remain enclosed in one's own tradition provides a danger of not seeing
how it looks from the outside. Its assumptions are never called into
question. How, for example, would Americans look at our foreign policy
if we regularly spoke to Europeans, Asians, Africans, and Latin Americans
about politics? Surely such discussions would make us reassess our own
policies in a very different light. By suggesting the possibility of critique,
I am not thinking of· a wholesale rejection of one's tradition. Instead,
one might discover a distortion of one's own belief, or an overdeveloped
part of the tradition might be balanced by an alternative voice.

"Third, dialogue can actually strengthen one's own spiritual tradition. It

can lay bare one's assumptions, usually unconsciously held, and force one
to a better, more clearly grounded conviction of what one holds true.
One could, for example, see Christ differently and his relevance to one's
life even more fully by encounter with another. We can reexperience
Christian convictions in light of the contrast that they may have with the
other. I was in a Buddhist-Christian dialogue some years ago, and one of
the Buddhist representatives remarked at how every room in the
monastery had a crucifix. He wanted to discuss this. I had been so used
to them that they didn't even register. Sometimes we can domesticate
our deepest symbols, and it takes an outside voice to highlight their
prominence.

"A fourth goal for dialogue is that it can expand one's horizons of a
awareness. We see things from a different point of view, and we can get
an expanded sense of broader human transcendental experience. It may
also be that there are insights from another's religious tradition that
could actually complement deficiencies in one's own faith, even as they
strengthen one's own religious tradition. Shortly before he died, Thomas
Merton wrote that for some Christian monastics, learning a religious
discipline from another tradition could not only assist a given monk, but
also contribute to monastic renewal in the Western church."
Teaching Stories

A collection of eighteen essays by religious scholars

edited by Paul F. Knitter espouses a multifaith
expression of pluralism. Here is an excerpt on
hospitality from an essay by K.L. Seshagiri Rao on
Gandhi as pioneer of pluralism.

"In India the problem of interreligious relations has

engaged the attention of thinking persons for over
three thousand years. In his own day Gandhi was
confronted with strained relations between Hindus and Muslims. Hatred
and suspicion had poisoned the atmosphere. Bloody religious riots were
frequent. The growing tension between the two communities distressed
Gandhi a great deal. He deplored these riots and believed that both
Hindus and Muslims could and should live and work together for the
common good. He pleaded and prayed and fasted for religious harmony.
In fact, during the last decades of his life his major preoccupation was
harmony between Hindus and Muslims.

"Gandhi was a Hindu who advocated the rights of the Muslims. He

pleaded with the Hindu majority to treat the minority with justice and
fairness. He went from place to place, meeting Hindus and Muslims and
proclaiming the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood/sisterhood of all
peoples. He said to the people: 'God is one. Allah and Rama are his
names.' In the midst of pervasive darkness, Gandhi served as a beacon of
light. He sought to heal the wounds that people, in their religious frenzy,
were inflicting upon themselves. He worked miracles. Lord Mountbatten,
the last viceroy of India, described the situation in this way: 'While the
55,OOO-man boundary force in the Punjab was swamped by riots, the
one-man boundary force brought peace to Bengal.' A fanatic Hindu,
however, believing that Gandhi was disloyal to Hinduism, assassinated
him. Even in his death he achieved something remarkable; his martyrdom
shamed his people out of the hysteria of hatred and fratricide and helped
the country consolidate its constructive and democratic forces.

"Gandhi wanted harmony and friendship to be established not merely

between the Hindus and Muslims of India, but among the adherents of all
the great religions of the world. 'Hindu-Muslim unity means not only unity
between Hindus and Muslims but between all those who believe India to
be their home no matter to what faith they belong.' The problem of the
mutual relationship of religions is worldwide today. What is going on in
Ireland, the Middle East, Cyprus, the Indian subcontinent, and elsewhere
in the name of religion is most distressing and depressing. The exaltation
of terrorism in the name of religion is tragic. In the words of Gandhi, 'To
revile another's religion, to make reckless statements, utter untruth, to
break the heads of innocent men, to desecrate temples or mosques is a
denial of God.'

"Gandhi's interreligious dialogue authentically represents the Indian

attitude of respect for all religions. The idea that 'truth is one: sages call
it by different names' has been alive in Hinduism since the time of the
Rgveda. Because of his great concern for truth, Gandhi was inwardly
receptive to the currents of truth coming from other religions. To ignore
any of them meant to ignore God's infinite richness and to impoverish
humanity spiritually. Gandhi wanted all religions to revive their pristine
past and develop their traditions. 'I ask no Hindu or Mussalman to
surrender an iota of his religious principle. Only let him be sure that it is
religion. But I do ask of every Hindu and Mussalman not to fight for an
earthly gain.'
"Although Gandhi insisted that each religion must hold firm to its
principles and distinctive differences, he was clear that no religion can
hold up these principles and differences as superior to all others. In
questioning absolute truth-claims, he resonates with a core content of
the pluralist model. Here religious believers, or especially religious
leaders, can learn from the scientists. The sciences, which study the
natural world, do not claim 'any monopoly of wisdom for their own
particular branch of study nor quarrel about the superiority of one
science over the others.' In a similar way, Gandhi held that each religion
must bring its individual contribution to humanity's understanding of the
spiritual world and not quarrel about the superiority of one religion over
another, for God's love embraces the whole world. He believed that all
the world religions are God-given and that they serve the people to
whom they are revealed. They are allies engaged in the common cause of
the moral and spiritual uplift of humanity. In the context of the emerging
world community, all the great religions are useful, necessary, and
complementary to one another as revealing different facets of the one
truth.

"The problems that threaten the world community are not merely
political or economic; they arise as well from certain basic religious and
spiritual attitudes. If the faith and integrity of other persons are not
respected, genuine communication and consequent world community will
be at best a dream."

from The Myth of Religious Superiority: Multifaith Explorations of

Religious Pluralism edited by Paul F. Knitter
Spiritual Exercises

A Spiritual Exercise from Behold Your Life: A

Pilgrimage Through Your Memories by Macrina
Wiederkehr

Macrina Wiederkehr has designed this forty-day

retreat to explore "the sacred side of your life's
hidden goodness." In one prayer she demonstrates
the practice of holding others in our heart.

"God of my early childhood, help me to live with the fact that life doesn't
always come out even. I place in my heart and in yours all the people of
my early childhood who come to my mind as having been unfair to me. I
embrace also those who may have suffered some injustice because of
me. Holding these people in my heart where you have made your home is
the best way I know to pray for them. I pray, too, for those whose
kindness I remember. Bless them with your loving kindness now. May it
follow them throughout their lives. Amen."

To Practice: Try the practice of holding people in your heart where God
has made a home. See them all together in this place of many rooms.
IMAGINATION
Enhances:
Creativity

Balances/Counters:
Ratonalism

The Basic Practice

In the spiritual life, imagination has two meanings. First, it is a

human faculty — the part of us that traffics in images, symbols,
myths, and stories. It is the capacity we all have for innovative
thinking and creative expression. Second, the imagination is an
inner reality, a boundless realm not defined by our senses or reason
that we know from our dreams and can enter via certain exercises
while awake. The practice of imagination encourages us to use this
faculty and enables us to explore the realm.

Begin by learning the language of imagination. Keep track of the

images that come to you spontaneously in association with your
feelings and thoughts. Draw pictures of what you encounter in your
dreams. Contemplate art and see yourself as part of the picture.
Read myths and tell stories. Remember, through the ages spiritual
pilgrims have found that it is possible to step into the inner realm of
imagination. There you can find fuel for your journey and gifts of
wisdom.
Why This Practice May Be For You

"You're just imagining that. It's not real." Unfortunately, many

people associate imagination with "imaginary" and its connotation of
"unreal." This is a difficult spiritual practice for those who think
that everything has to be verified by sensory perception and
empirical evidence. Reason also gets in the way of imagination,
especially when it is codified into rationalism which regards only
logic and analytical thought as valid routes to truth.

When we discount the imagination, we cut ourselves off from the

riches that can fuel our creativity. We limit the ways we can view
the world and our own experience. There is much more to life than
can be contained in a rational philosophy.

Quotations

Reverie is the Sunday of thought. — Henri Frederic Amiel quoted in

May Sarton Among the Usual Days by Susan Sherman

Our spiritual famine has concluded — we are just beginning to

restore the honor of the imagination. — Lauren Artress in Walking a
Sacred Path

But if we learn to read the signs of life all around us, and if we
discover that we are indeed created to be creative, then we can
rediscover the power and resourcefulness of imagination — another
aspect of soul. — Marjory Zoet Bankson

One minute it was a rock and the next a talisman, a charm, a

fetish, a relic. It became a stone made sacred by human
imagination. — D. Stephenson Bond in Living Myth

And so there comes a time — I believe we are in such a time — when

a civilization has to be renewed by the discovery of new mysteries,
by the undemocratic but sovereign power of the imagination, the
power that makes all things new. — Norman O. Brown
Your imagination is your preview of life's coming attractions. —
Albert Einstein quoted in Zen and the Art of Making a Living by
Laurence G. Boldt

Imagination is the creative task of making symbols, joining things

together in such a way that they throw new light on each other and
on everything around them. The imagination is a discovering
faculty, a faculty for seeing relationships, for seeing meanings that
are special and even quite new. — Thomas Merton quoted in The
Celtic Way of Prayer by Esther de Waal

We tend to consider imagination too lightly, forgetting that the life

we make, for ourselves individually and for the world as a whole, is
shaped and limited only by the perimeters of our imagination.
Things are as we imagine them to be, as we imagine them into
existence. Imagination is creativity, and the way we make our world
depends on the vitality of our imagination. — Thomas Moore in The
Re-enchantment of Everyday Life

If you always imagine God in the same way, no matter how true and
beautiful it may be, you will not be able to receive the gift of the
new ways he has ready for you. — Carlos Valles in This Our Exile by
James Martin

So you see, imagination needs noodling — long, inefficient, happy

idling, dawdling, and puttering. — Brenda Veland quoted in The
Artist's Way by Julie Cameron

We must have new eyes — the eyes of our heart enlightened. That
means that we must see essential realities vividly. We must have
our imagination captured. Matthew Arnold said that conduct is
three-fourths of life. But it isn't. Getting your imagination captured
is almost the whole of life. The minute the eyes of your heart are
enlightened, the minute your imagination gives you the picture of
your path, your goal, your aim — it is as good as done. The way to
become the architect of your fate, the captain of your soul, is to
have your imagination captured. — Rufus Jones quoted in Rufus
Jones: Essential Writings edited by Kerry Walters
Book Excerpts

An Excerpt from Radical Optimism: Rooting

Ourselves in Reality by Beatrice Bruteau

Beatrice Bruteau presents the contemplative life

as a radically optimistic path that embraces
meaning and transformation. Here is an excerpt
on the spiritual practice of imagination.

"Most of us have always let our imaginations

simply run wild. They have grown up without
anyone ever giving them any serious attention.
The intellect has been trained with scholarship and the will with
morality. The feelings have learned to flow in the channels of our
culture through socialization. The artistic imagination may have
gotten some exercise and direction, but the everyday imagination,
what of that? The images that fill our consciousness in our waking
and dreaming hours, that govern our world view, our biases and our
emphases, our expectations of other people, our interpretations of
our experience, and that tyrant of recent years, the self-image.

"We need to become aware of the role of our imagination in our

everyday inner life. We should spend some time just watching it
until we learn what sorts of things it does, and understand how it is
connected to our speech, body language, and behavior. We should
observe what kind of reveries and fantasies we revolve in our minds
when they are free-wheeling. These will accumulate and build on
their predecessors until they have constructed a whole world, which
for our undiscriminating subconscious mind is indistinguishable from
reality.

"Thus we can interpret someone's accidental sharp tone of voice as

an unfriendly reaction to ourselves, begin to give that person life in
our imagination as someone who doesn't like us, therefore be on the
lookout for subsequent evidence of hostility, be ready to interpret
everything that happens in that light, and of course ourselves show
distrust and unfriendliness in turn, which naturally have their effect
on the other person; and so by building this thing up in our
imagination we can develop a whole atmosphere and relationship of
hostility that may be completely false and unnecessary because it
all began from something quite accidental. Similarly, by persistently
thinking well of persons, looking for good traits in them, imagining
them as pleasant and agreeable, well-disposed toward ourselves,
we will enable ourselves to behave in a naturally friendly way to
them and elicit friendly responses.

"A large area of concern for the cultivation of the imagination is the
area of entertainment. What kind of images do we allow entrance
to our minds when we go in search of amusement? What kind of
books do we read and movies and television watch? What kind of
music do we listen to? What kind of dances do we see and do? What
kind of sports? What effect do these things have on our spiritual
life? It is a large subject and deserving of careful study, but one
thing I can tell you: the answer is not 'no effect.' Everything that
ever enters the consciousness has some effect on it and takes up
some kind of residence there. Furthermore, there are no thought-
tight or feeling-tight compartments in consciousness. Everything
seeps into everything else.

"Finally, all our problems with poor self-image and unhappiness over
our lives are rooted in the imagination. We like to attribute our
depressed feelings to circumstances — and indeed there are
circumstances under which some people have to live that are
enough to depress anyone — but we also know that people can
make themselves unhappy in quite neutral circumstances, and on
the other hand can rise above an unfavorable quality of life and be
happy.

"A story I like is that about the gathering in the elevator at nine
o'clock on a Monday morning. Here come the business people, the
executives and their clerical staff, with their Monday morning
blues, looking glum and grumpy. The elevator operator, however, is
bouncy and full of good cheer. He greets everyone with a wide grin
and a hearty 'Good morning! What a fine day!' Finally someone who
can't stand all this cheerfulness so early in the morning asks, 'What
are you so happy about? What's so great about this day?' To which
the operator replies with enthusiasm, 'I ain't never lived this day
before!'
"That's what the imagination can do for you. So it behooves us to
guard our imaginations, to train them, to encourage them to feed
on inspiring and hopeful fare. In the Epistle to the Philippians we
read: 'Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just,
whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there
is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about
these things' (Philippians 4:8)."

Teaching Stories

A Teaching Story from Say Please, Say Thank You: The Respect
We Owe One Another by Donald McCullough

In this well-titled book, Donald McCullough discusses a wide

repertoire of practices that can serve as an antidote to the incivility
of our times. In the following illustration, he reveals the dynamics
of imagination as a lever of compassion.

"One day Gandhi stepped aboard a train as it started to move, and

one of his shoes slipped off and dropped on the tracks. Unable to
retrieve it, he calmly took off his other shoe and threw it back
along the track to land close to the first. When an amazed
passenger asked why he had done that, Gandhi smiled and said, 'The
poor man who finds the shoe lying on the track will now have a pair
he can use.' With the eyes of his imagination, Gandhi saw a man
with bare feet, saw him coming across a lone shoe and desperately
searching for the other, and saw the disappointment on his face
when he didn't find it; seeing these things, Gandhi did what he
could to help."

To Practice: Always be on the lookout for ways to imaginatively

practice compassion and kindness.

Spiritual Exercises

Devote an hour or two this week to gazing at clouds. Look for

images in the formations — faces, animals, trails, buildings. Let
your imagination roam! Also try cloud gazing with a companion. This
exercise demonstrates the breath of the imagination, as two people
rarely see the same things in the heavens.
JOY
Enhances:
Happiness

Balances/Counters:
Sadness, Sorrow

The Basic Practice

Joy is an essential spiritual practice growing out of faith, grace,

gratitude, hope, and love. It is the pure and simple delight in being alive.
Joy is our elated response to feelings of happiness, experiences of
pleasure, and awareness of abundance. It is also the deep satisfaction we
know when we are able to serve others and be glad for their good
fortune.

Invite joy into your life by staging celebrations. Host festivities to mark
transitions and changes in your life. Toast moments of happiness you
notice as you go through your day. Dance — jump for joy — as often as
possible. Life is not meant to be endured; it is to be enjoyed.

Why This Practice May Be For You

We often talk about this spiritual practice in the same breath with its
companions. We say joy and sorrow, happiness and sadness, smiles and
tears, the ecstasy and the agony. The experience of one intensifies our
awareness of the other. Sorrow, for example, may be the price we pay
for joy; when we have known great happiness in a relationship, we feel
its loss more deeply. Or think of those times when you laugh so hard you
cry.

Joy will usually be part of a set of symptoms presenting in your life. The
best protocol is to be thankful for the intensity of these feelings. When
you are experiencing sorrow and sadness, when the tears are flowing,
remember they can be stepping stones to joy.

Quotations

A life of joy is not in seeking happiness. But in experiencing and simply

being the circumstances of our life as they are. — Charlotte Joko Beck
quoted in Open Mind by Diane Mariechild

To find joy in another's joy

that is the secret of happiness.
— George Bernanos quoted in Joy by Beverly Elaine Eanes

These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that
your joy may be full. — John 15:14 in The Bible

The beating heart of the universe is holy joy. — Martin Buber quoted in
Simplicity: The Art of Living by Richard Rohr

We have God's joy in our blood. — Frederick Buechner in The Longing for
Home
The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything. — Julian of Norwich
quoted in Meditations with Julian of Norwich by Brendan Doyle

It is the mark of a good person to look for the achievement of good.

Sheer joy is God's and this demands companionship. — Thomas Aquinas
quoted in Sheer Joy by Matthew Fox

Finding joy is the hardest of all spiritual tasks. If the only way to make
yourself happy is by doing something silly, do it. — Rebbe Nachman of
Breslov in The Empty Chair

Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God. — Pierre Teilhard
de Chardin

From joy I came,

For joy I live,
and in Thy sacred joy
I shall melt again.
— Paramahamsa Yogananda

Deep joy is both the ground of love and the surest source of strength to
persevere in the course of compassion — even when trials abound, as
they often will. — Robert Ellwood in Finding Deep Joy

I have merged, like the bird, with the bright air,

And my thought flies to the place by the bo-tree.
Being, not doing, is my first joy.
— Theodore Roethke quoted in Finding Deep Joy by Robert Ellwood
Joy has no name. Its very being is lost in the great tide of selfless delight
— creation's response to the infinite loving of God. — Evelyn Underhill
quoted in Finding Deep Joy by Robert Ellwood

Joy is an intermezzo of gratitude that interrupts the routine motion of

life. — Lewis B. Smedes in How Can It Be All Right When Everything Is All
Wrong?

To wholeheartedly rejoice in another's good can deliver us from the

chains of competition. While polite congratulations may be socially
correct, it is not liberating. It takes a wholehearted delight in another's
accomplishments or good fortune to free us and enlarge our hearts. —
Edward Hays in The Great Escape Manual

This silent ability to impart to others the light of Divine Intelligence, and
all its attendant qualities of joy, warmth, insight, and revelation, is
captured in a Sufi phrase, "the smiling forehead." For illumination is
always linked with a kind of smile, like the mysterious, lingering smile of
the Buddha. — Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan in Awakening: A Sufi Experience

The atom's soul is nothing but energy. Spirit blazes in the dullest clay.
The life of every man — the heart of it — is pure and holy joy.
— George Leonard quoted in Shadow Culture by Eugene Taylor

Joy clarifies everything.

How many times have I found myself quite simply walking along. And
suddenly I receive one of these gusts of contentment, of, so to say, "joy"
or "well-being," which is a marvelous feeling because one has no idea
where it comes from. — Jacques Lusseyran in Against the Pollution of the
I
The announcement is the great joy that the Lord is present and living in
the world: that the Lord is with us. Dominus vobiscum, the Lord be with
you. This is what we are constantly announcing in the liturgy, that the
Lord is present in the world. — Thomas Merton quoted in Thomas Merton:
Essential Writings edited by Christine M. Bochen

Book Excerpts

An Excerpt from A Pilgrim in Aquarius by David Spangler

In this explanation of the New Age movement, David

Spangler addresses the role of positive thinking and
ways to practice joy.

"Accepting and encountering the suffering and pain

in our world is not pleasant, but for many people it
is easier to do than to encounter and accept the joy
that is in the world as well. Yet, unless we stand in
joy, we do not have access to the fullness of our
transformative and healing powers.

"I mentioned in the last section that the New Age movement is often
criticized for what one theologian friend of mine calls the 'Tinkerbell
syndrome.' This is the tendency to always see everything in the best
possible terms and to concentrate just on light, love, and joy, ignoring
the dark side of the world and its pain. I agree with this criticism; yet by
the same token, it is equally possible to get caught in an 'Oscar the
Grouch' syndrome in which everything is dark, troubled, suffering, evil,
and generally going to hell.
"One of the hardest things to be in the world today is an optimistic
idealist, someone who is not afraid to proclaim a positive vision. A person
who has ideals, is optimistic, positive, and joyous, and celebrates the
world is often said to be in denial, refusing to see reality as it is.

"Obviously, both perspectives can go to extremes. Yet, the New Age is by

definition a vision of a positive and joyous future, and unless one can
experience a sense of joy and positive spirit, it is hard to know how one
can have and embody the qualities that can bring such a future into
being. We are not going to craft it out of an obsession with darkness and
evil or a pessimistic failure of imagination.

"How can one be joyous, though, in the presence of the suffering in the
world? Well, for one thing, suffering, pain, dysfunction, and evil are not
all that are present in the world, though you wouldn't know it from the
fare that is served to us daily by our news and entertainment media.
There are positive, creative, uplifting things going on as well.

"Also, there is a misunderstanding about what joy is. Joy is not a

response to something in the environment; that is happiness. Joy is not
necessarily a feeling of pleasure; it is not the same as feeling good. I
have felt profound joy in the midst of depression, sorrow, and illness. I
do not have to like the condition I'm in in order to feel joy. In fact,
running away from difficult situations that do not immediately bring
pleasure or gratification can keep us in a state of disconnection and
shallowness that inhibits the experience of joy.

"Joy is an active, creative, unconditional force that flows from the heart
of the Beloved; it rejoices not so much at what is happening in the world
but in resonance with the love and wholeness that is the fundamental
reality of the world. It is a connective force that allows the healing and
transforming power of that deeper reality to enter and work its magic in
our world of imperfect and incomplete manifestations.

"Consider for a moment if you were ill, who you would like to minister to
you as a healer: someone who is pessimistic and sorrowful, constantly
reminding you of how much you are suffering and holding out little hope
for your recovery or someone who is joyous, positive, encouraging, and
filled with a vision for your future?

"A person can accurately diagnose a problem and still be joyous.

"Joyousness is, as I said, a connecting force linking our hearts and minds
with the presence of the sacred. Joy is what the sacred is. How can we
step into the presence of the Beloved if we cannot understand or accept
the qualities which manifest that presence?

"I do not look for joy in the events or things of my life; I look for joy in
the connection with my soul and in my connection with the world. Joy is
not necessarily the absence of suffering; it is the presence of God.

"For the experience of joy transcends the self and is also an experience
of participation in the well-being and lives of others. Paradoxically, joy
makes it possible to face the suffering of the world and not be seduced
into a dark imagination that says such pain is too big, too daunting, too
overwhelming to ever be healed or transformed; but at the same time,
accepting the presence of suffering and taking it into my heart in
compassionate and empathetic ways — striving to feel in my own being
the suffering of others — opens me to joy because it opens me to the
reality of connectedness. This is not joy because others are suffering and
certainly not using images of suffering as a meditative tool to make me
feel joyous (because what I will undoubtedly feel if I use suffering as a
tool is not joy but happiness that I am not suffering, which is a
disconnecting attitude). It is the joy that is the natural presence of the
Beloved that arises because I am not separating myself from others or
from the world.

"If you have a hard time finding joy, you can look for a spiritual discipline
that will help (and here the emphasis should be on discipline: the
consistent practice of a craft, for true joy comes from depth and
commitment — which is temporal depth — rather than from sampling
things in a surface way, seeing what makes you feel good or brings you
pleasure). However, you can also seek out and associate with people who
are themselves joyous. You can expose yourself to conditions and
artifacts, like great art or music, that arises from joy. For what is
created in a spirit of joy conveys that spirit to others. And if all else
fails, I have found that humor and laughter is the portal into joy, when
that humor is not based on the misfortune or humiliation of others.
Watch a funny movie, read a funny book, be humorous about yourself.
After all, it's a start! Besides, God laughs, why shouldn't you?"

Ten Practices to Warm the Heart and Fill the Soul with Joy

An Excerpt from God Is a Verb: Kabbalah and the

Practice of Mystical Judaismby Rabbi David A. Cooper

David A. Cooper has written a masterwork filled with

insights, epiphanies, and fresh approaches to the hidden
secrets of the universe. Here is an excerpt on joy.

"Rebbe Nachman said that the pathway to our true destiny is joy. Indeed,
joy and enthusiasm are important aspects of the spiritual path in ways.
The wonderful part of this practice is that it nurtures us while we are
doing it, and usually helps us see things from a different perspective.
"Here are ten practices to warm the heart and fill the soul with joy. Any
one of them can change your day.

"Music: If you don't already own one, get a miniature audiotape player
and comfortable earphones. Find pieces of music that move your soul.
Play them repeatedly when you are engaged in mundane activities. Play
them so much that they are in your mind even when the player is not on.
Also, sing! In the shower, in the car, spontaneously, whenever you wish.

"Dance: Find a room in the house where you will not be interrupted and
nobody can see you though the windows. Move the furniture so that you
have a clear space to dance. Play some music you love, and move your
body any way you wish for twenty minutes. This is a dance for you alone.
If it does not make you feel wonderful, choose another piece of music
next time.

"Nature: Make it a point at least once a week to spend two hours in a

raw, natural setting with a few people around as possible. Go to the
beach, mountains, forest, desert, someplace filled with the beauty of
nature. During this time, try not to think about yourself. Rather, act as a
nature-loving tour guide for yourself who is constantly saying things like:
'Look at that ant'; 'Listen to that wind'; 'Smell that flower'; 'Touch the
bark on that tree'; 'See how the sun glistens off the water'; 'Be very still
and listen.' Try to spend the entire two hours without thinking about your
own life. You may wish to carry a notepad so that if distractions arise,
you can make a brief note to attend to these concerns after the two
hours are up.

"Selectivity: We choose fairly carefully the food we eat. We know what

does not agree with us, and we usually try to avoid it. The same should
hold true for what we choose to feed our minds. For one month, try to be
selective of the type of programs you watch, the quality of radio you
listen to, the magazines you read, the movies you go to see. You may
choose to minimize experiences that titillate and excite, which often
include scenes of violence, anger, and general mayhem. This kind of
material may entertain us, but it does not give us joy. Indeed, it does the
reverse. Try one month of selectivity, and substitute one of the following
choices:

"Books: Take an hour and browse your local bookstore or library without
any goal. Let yourself be guided by whim. Find a seat and read parts of a
book or magazine that catch your fancy. The idea is to discover new
areas of interest or simply to be lightly entertained, with no objective in
mind.

"Playground: Take an hour and walk in a local park or playground. Ride a

swing. Sit on a jungle gym. Lie in the grass. Hug a tree. Talk with a child
you don't know. Try to be with your own inner child, not thinking about
adult things. As in step 3, see if you can spend an hour not thinking
about yourself.

"Museum: Spend a morning of afternoon exploring a local museum, just

hanging out. Ponder the works of the artists. Let your fantasy flow.
Again, try not to think about your own past and future during this time.

"Fantasy: Pick up travel brochures, get videos from the library on nature
or distant lands, and let yourself fantasize about traveling around the
world. Pick a place you would really like to go. Get books from library
and study everything you can find about this place. Plan your trip, even if
it is years away.

"Soak: Fill a tub with warm water. Use bubble bath if you like. Soak your
whole body for at least a half hour, trying to keep your mind free. If you
begin thinking about yourself, make up a fantasy and float away.
"Thanks: Speak words of thankfulness to God. Reflect on your physical
gifts: eyesight; hearing; and the abilities to speak, stand, walk, touch,
smell, taste, and so forth. For each thing, give thanks. Reflect on your
shelter, food, safety, kitchen, bathroom, and give thanks. Whatever
comes to mind, find something in it for which you can be thankful. Try to
get into the habit of thankfulness (rather than the normal habit of
complaint). Each night as you go to sleep, see how many things you can
think of to give thanks for that day. You may discover that the list is so
long, you will fall asleep before finishing it.

"Notice that all of the above suggestions require taking time for yourself.
Of course, there are many joyful practices that involve being with
others. Take advantage of these as well. But be assured, our joy is
ultimately not dependent upon other people, but on our individual
relationship with life.

"Obviously, there are hundreds of activities that lighten the heart and
nourish the soul. As noted above, you do not have to wait for joy to
arrive on its own; you can invite it in through the front door this very
moment."
JUSTICE
Enhances:
Equality, Dignity

Balances/Counters:
Oppression, Fanaticism

The Basic Practice

Doing justice is a central imperative in Judaism, Christianity, and

Islam. Buddhists are urged to be socially engaged. Hinduism,
Taoism, Confucianism, and primal religions emphasize right
relationships within communities as building blocks of justice.

This practice applies to the whole range of human interactions, and

today it is also being extended to animals and the environment. It
means that we deal fairly with others, recognizing the equality and
dignity of all. It requires that we work to insure that all people,
especially the poor and the weak, have access to opportunities. It
assumes that none of us is free until all of us are.

Practice justice by demanding it. Words can be as forceful as deeds

— the prophets of old proved that. Name injustices when you see
them. Speak boldly and put your body and your money where your
mouth is. Stand up and be counted.
Why This Practice May Be For You

Often we are propelled into the struggle for justice when we

experience an injustice ourselves; we are not treated fairly at work
or our friendship is exploited by an associate. One day while reading
the newspaper, we may be shocked to learn of the treatment of
certain groups in our society. Or we may step back and realize that
we have been ignoring what are clearly injustices around us. Our
very lack of concern can wake us up to the need for justice.

There is also a "shadow" side to this spiritual practice. Sometimes in

our fervor for justice we decide that we can ignore the rights and
dignity of those who oppose us. Instead of being justice seekers,
then, we become fanatics.

Quotations

Saints have a heart full of justice. — Thomas Aquinas quoted in

Confessions by Matthew Fox

Dom Helder Camara counsels that we must carry a reverence for

justice as a mother carries a reverence for her unborn child. — Dom
Helder Camara quoted in Lyrics for Re-Creation by James Conlon

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a

difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make, which,
over time, add up to big differences we cannot foresee.
— Marian Wright Edelman

There can be little growth in holiness without growth in a sense of

social justice. — Edward Hays in A Lenten Hobo Honeymoon

This spiritual journey is often characterized by an intense passion

for justice and liberation, especially in the face of exploitation and
deprivation. The desire for justice is motivated not merely by the
plight of appalling suffering, but by a deeper sense that love and
well-being must prevail in the end. — Diarmuid O'Murchu in
Quantum Theology
Stands must be taken. If I am to respect myself I have to search
myself for what I believe is right and take a stand on what I find.
Otherwise, I have not gathered together what I have been given; I
have not embraced what I have learned; I lack my own conviction.
— Hugh Prather

Do not be surprised or scandalized by the sinful and the tragic. Do

what you can to be peace and to do justice, but never expect or
demand perfection on this earth. — Richard Rohr in Everything
Belongs

Justice is not an ideal state or theory but a matter of personal

sensibility, a set of emotions that engage us with the world and
make us care. — Robert Solomon in A Passion for Justice

To pursue the path of healing for our nation, we need to remember

what we have endured. But we must not simply pass on the violence
of that experience through the pursuit of punishment. We seek to
do justice to the suffering without perpetuating the hatred aroused.
We think of this as restorative justice. — Archbishop Desmond Tutu
quoted in Soul of a Citizen by Paul Rogat Loeb

Believe in spiritual power to bring healing and justice to our lives

and to this earth. — Jim Wallis in The Soul of Politics

Maybe Auden was right, and we read mystery stories to have evil
put in its place, and to have justice and righteousness triumph over
personal disorder and society's chaos. — Stephen Kendrick in Holy
Clues

More than a few Christians might be surprised to learn that the call
to be involved in creating justice for the poor is just as essential
and nonnegotiable within the spiritual life as is Jesus'
commandment to pray and keep our private lives in order. — Ronald
Rolheiser in The Holy Longing
Book Excerpts

An Excerpt from Grace in Action: Richard

Rohr and Others edited by Terry Carney and
Christina Spahn

This collaborative effort by Richard Brooks

and others bespeaks the necessity of melding
contemplation and action in Christian faith.
Here is an excerpt by Richard Rohr on justice.

"We must work to create a world in which it is

easier for people to do good, said Peter
Maurin. And that is our difficulty today. We
are surrounded by good, well-meaning folks
who are swept along in a stream of shallow options. Not only is the
good made increasingly difficult to do, it is even increasingly
difficult to recognize at all. It seems that affluence takes away the
clear awareness of what is life and what is death. I do not think the
rich are any more or less sinful than the simple and the poor, but
they just have many more ways to call their sin virtue. There is a
definite deadening of the awareness of true good and true evil. In
its place, we have mostly opinionated folks and sentimental
opinions at that. Is there any turning back (or forward!) to
awareness?

"I have found one fuzzy area that often needs to be clarified before
spiritual conversion can take place: We have confused justice and
charity. Charity was always considered the highest virtue and was
popularly thought of as a kind of magnanimous and voluntary giving
of ourselves, preferably for selfless motives. As long as we rose to
this level on occasion, such as giving gifts as Christmas or baskets at
Thanksgiving and occasional almsgiving, we could think of ourselves
as charitable people who were operating at the highest level of
virtue. The spiritual trap was that we always remained in charge;
we decided who was worthy and unworthy of our love, and we
garnered significant self-esteem as a byproduct. The question then
becomes: Is this really virtue at all or actually an avoidance of the
Divine Caritas? Is it any type of surrender or just another type of
control? Are we instruments of God's love flowing into this world, or
are we perhaps inhibiting that flow by our lack of true solidarity?
Ordinarily, we wait for some onrush of warm, sad, or guilty feeling
to drive us again to 'an act of charity.' What suffers in both giver
and givee is the redemptive experience of true union and
compassion. Some immediate needs might be met (and that's good),
but the Lord and the great Good News are not well served. In other
words, no new creation unfolds, no new peoplehood is formed, no
healing grace is outpoured. It is just the same old system continued.
Maybe that is why salvation history has proceeded at such a snail's
pace among the comfortable: We have tried to be charitable
without being just, we have tried to give without letting go, we
have wanted to consider ourselves Christians while being only
enlightened pagans.

"What has been lacking is the virtue of justice. The Christian virtue
of justice is indispensable without charity. Justice and charity are
distinguishable but clearly inseparable in the teaching of the
Doctors and the social encyclical letters of the Popes. The giving
and caring spirit of charity both motivates and completes our sense
of justice, but the virtue of charity cannot legitimately substitute
for justice. Persons capable of doing justice are not justifiable in
preferring to 'do charity.' Although this has clearly been taught on
paper, I would say it is the great missing link in the practical
preaching and lifestyle of the church. We have ignored the
foundational obligation of justice in our works of charity and thus
have ended up not even doing charity! For centuries we have been
content to patch up holes temporarily (making ourselves feel
benevolent) while in fact maintaining the legal and institutional
structures that created the holes (making those at the bottom feel
like victims). Now it has caught up with us in unimaginable poverty,
dysfunction, alienation, and human abuse.

"The question of basic social justice has been unasked and

undemanded for so long — even by the redeemed society of the
church — that when we ask it today we are considered to be
troublesome, leftist, or dangerous. Even a bishop of the church like
Dom Helder Camara of Brazil is forced to say, 'As long as we feed
the poor, they call us saints. But when we ask why they are poor,
they call us communists.' Those questions of justice will always be
subversive and countercultural to those who are enjoying the fruits
of the system as it is. That is why Jesus' proclamation of the
Kingdom is good news only for the poor (Luke 4:18). 'You must not
be surprised, brothers and sisters, that the world hates you' (1 John
3:13). What else could any self-maintaining system do? That is why
the teachings of Jesus have put us on a collision course with the
world that needs to divide us into those with the power and those
without it. Instead, Jesus preaches a social order in which true
charity is possible, a way of relating by which cooperation and
community make sense. Jesus offers a world where all share the
power of the Spirit 'each according to his or her gift.' And that 'Spirit
is given to each person for the sake of the common good' (1 Cor.
12:7). And that is the key to Christian community and Christian
social justice. It is not a vision of totalitarian equality, nor is it
capitalist competition (read: 'domination of the fittest'), but a
world in which cooperation, community, compassion, and the
charity of Christ are paramount — and to which all other things are
subservient.

"Do we any longer believe this? Do we think it is a realistic political

option? Is it even worth working for? Or should we head off to the
desert? I'm afraid that we have too often prayed that the Kingdom
come. We are trapped with an answer.

"The kingdom reigns not just when the oppressed are liberated but
even more when the oppressors are liberated from their insecurities
and fears. It seems we are essentially involved in one another's
conversion to justice and charity. We cannot hate, compete,
compare, or dominate one another and still expect the new
community of Christ to unfold. Our assurance that this is the Gospel
is that God in Christ does none of these to us!

"The whole struggling world is belatedly wrestling with these issues.

People of good will on left or right, East or West, believer or
agnostic are reaching beyond the dichotomies of this century.
Perhaps none has expressed it more succinctly and even humorously
than Jaime Cardinal Sin of Manila. To an American audience he
said:
 'Strength without compassion is violence,
compassion without justice is weakness,
justice without love is totalitarianism,
and charity without justice is baloney!'

Right on Jaime!"

Daily Cue, Reminder, Vow, Blessing

• Taking money out of my wallet is my cue to practice justice.

• Whenever I see a poor person, I am reminded of the need for

justice.

• Watching a street demonstration, I vow to wage my own fight for

justice.

• Blessed is the Great Liberator who calls us to be just in a world of

inequality, oppression, and suffering.
KINDNESS
Enhances:
Generosity

Balances/Counters:
Selfishness

The Basic Practice

Kindness is the first of the three great treasures advocated by Lao

Tzu. The Buddha taught that generosity is a primary quality of an
awakened mind. Muhammad regarded kindness as an essential sign
of faith. Jewish and Christian ethics are built upon deeds of
kindness, as are the daily interactions of people of primal
traditions.

The spiritual practice of kindness encompasses a range of small acts

and habits that we know as old-fashioned good manners — saying
"please" and "thank you," waiting your turn, lending a helping hand,
or cheering someone up with a smile. It applies not just to your
relationships with other people. Etiquette in the spiritual life
extends to things, animals, plants, and the Earth.

This practice also means being generous with your presence, your
time, and your money. Give freely without expecting anything in
return. Just do it. Kindness is not a quid pro quo endeavor.

Why This Practice May Be For You

Few of us would describe ourselves as unkind, cruel, or nasty, yet

we would have to admit that we often miss the mark on this
spiritual practice. Just remember the many times you have been
hurt by someone not doing something — the call that didn't come
when you were feeling low, the thank you note that never
appeared, the missed appointment — and then consider how often
you have neglected to act in similar circumstances. Kindness is very
susceptible to the sin of omission.

Still, acknowledging that we have missed another's kindness can

make us want to be kind more consistently ourselves. This is one of
those situations when a negative experience has a positive
outcome.

Of course, sometimes we are simply too self-absorbed to notice

that we are not being kind. Selfishness quickly undermines manners.
And generosity is difficult for both the miser and the glutton.

Quotations

If the earth does grow inhospitable toward human presence, it is

primarily because we have lost our sense of courtesy toward the
earth and its inhabitants. — Thomas Berry quoted in Rummaging for
God by Melannie Svoboda

Teach us to remember the little courtesies, to be swift to speak the

grateful and happy word, to believe rejoicingly in each other's best,
and to face all life bravely because we face it with united heart. —
Walter Russell Bowie quoted in The Gift of Prayer edited by Jared
Kieling

Appreciative words are the most powerful force for good on the
earth. — George W. Crane quoted in Full Esteem Ahead by Diane
Loomans

Kindness trumps greed: it asks for sharing. Kindness trumps fear: it

calls forth gratefulness and love. Kindness trumps even stupidity,
for with sharing and love, one learns. — Marc Estrin quoted in
Prayers for a Thousand Years edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias
Amidon
Be kind to people whether they deserve your kindness or not. If
your kindness reaches the deserving, good for you; if your kindness
reaches the undeserving, take joy in your compassion. — James
Fadiman and Robert Frager in Essential Sufism

Great things happen, blessed encounters take place when you throw
yourself on God's mercy and peoples' kindness. — Jose Hobday in
Stories of Awe and Abundance

There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy.

Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; my philosophy is
kindness. — The Dalai Lama

The kindnesses of others fertilize our soul, they become a part of

who we are, and we carry them and their love. We feel this when
people die, how their gifts remain alive in us. — Wayne Muller in
How, Then, Shall We Live?

If there is any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any
fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall
not pass this way again. — William Penn quoted in Lent by Megan
McKenna

Practice kindness, particularly when you feel irritated or things are

not going well. Kindness hardly ever goes wrong. — Lewis Richmond
in Work as a Spiritual Practice

When you give something you feel good, because at that time you
feel at one with what you are giving. — Shunryu Suzuki-roshi quoted
in At Home with Dying edited by Merrill Collett
Book Excerpts

An Excerpt from The Healing Power of

Kindness by Jean Maalouf

Jean Maalouf points out the benefits of

practicing kindness in our everyday lives. Here is
an excerpt on this virtue.

"People all over the world are hungry for peace

of mind, for finding solutions to their problems,
for finding ways to improve their relationships
with others, and for finding meaningful ways of
life. A loving and generous kindness can certainly make a
difference. Kindness, a precious God-given gift to us, is one of the
sweet expressions of love.

"Giving, not because we have to, but for the sheer sake of giving,
just out of love, is something really beautiful — out of this world!
This kind of gratuitous goodness — a lavish kindness — makes our
world a better place in which to live, and makes us better people.

"Everyone benefits from kindness. We are so deeply touched by it

that we are transformed. In the holy of holies of our being, we feel
connected, centered, involved, engaged, and deeply bonded to
others, regardless of our divisions due to ideology, religion, race,
gender, ethnicity, nationality, economic status, or other factors.
After all, we are all made of flesh, bones, and blood. We belong to
one human family. We all have the same basic needs. We are one.
We are whole. We are human together. We are in the same boat of
destiny.

"We cannot be but kind together and to each other. This is written
in our very nature and clearly stated in our Scripture. 'You shall love
the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and
with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as
yourself.' (Lk 10:27) Love is the foundation of our very survival.

"Kindness means empathy, true intimacy, encouragement,

admiration, service, understanding, genuineness, concern, truth,
trust, and all that makes us true images of God. The earnest desire
to conform ourselves to the image of God and to Jesus Christ will
make bitterness, cunningness, and lies disappear. The very attempt
to be like Jesus and to see Jesus in every person we meet is already
a source of sweetness that flows from our very being to all those
who come our way. Mother Teresa of Calcutta said: 'Be the living
expression of God's kindness — kindness in your face, kindness in
your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting.'"

Spiritual Exercises

A Spiritual Exercise from How We Behave at the Feast:

Reflections on Living in an Age of Plenty by Dwight Currie

Dwight Currie thinks we have forgotten our manners at the Feast of

Existence, and in this book he gives many examples of small acts of
kindness we need to relearn. Here is an example.

"The next time you find yourself dining on someone's reputation,

snacking on someone's feelings, or enjoying a steady diet of nothing
except stories about yourself, remember you are talking with your
mouth full.

"Stop, close your mouth, and listen. It's the other person's turn."

To Practice: The next time you notice your mouth is full, give
someone else center stage.
LISTENING
Enhances:
Discernment

Balances/Counters:
Disregard for Others

The Basic Practice

One spiritual practice is often associated with others. Listening

involves attention, being present, and hospitality, and it is a
component of devotion, nurturing, and wonder.

Listening is our bridge to the wisdom of sacred texts and spiritual

teachers. It is an essential part of the discernment process whereby
we identify God's messages for us. Listening enables us to tune in to
others and our inner voices of intuition and conscience. It is how we
know we are part of the natural, technological, and media worlds
all around us.

But it takes practice to be a really good listener. Start by listening

like a baby does upon encountering a sound for the first time. Then
listen like a child, noticing music, rhythm, and the variety of noises.
Next, tune in to the messages coming to you from all directions and
multiple levels of experience. And remember the advice of Native
American seers: speak only half as much as you listen.

Why This Practice May Be For You

There is perhaps no greater way to show our regard for our friends,
family, and associates than to truly listen to them. The "listening
heart," as this attitude is called, leads to a deepening of
relationships and a greater sense of self for all parties. And this kind
of communication isn't limited to human interactions. Listen to an
animal, the waves on the beach, or the roar of a city neighborhood,
and you will come to a greater appreciation of your place in the
universe.

Conversely, an inability or unwillingness to listen is a symptom of

self-centeredness. It signals that we are shut up in ourselves, not
interested in participating in what is going on around us. It can also
indicate an obliviousness to our own best interests which may be
trying to make themselves known through our inner voices. In a
universe where so many things are speaking to us on so many levels,
it is not wise to ignore the voices.

Quotations

Blessed are the ears which hear God's whisper and listen not to the
murmurs of the world. — Thomas a Kempis quoted in The Sun &
Moon Over Assisi by Gerard Thomas Straub

Hospitable people are also good listeners, which explains why

listening has long been considered one of the most important habits
to cultivate if we wish to get closer to God. In my own life I've
found that when I am able to listen carefully enough to anyone,
listen to them with my full heart, then the walls of separation come
crumbling down. Martin Buber believed that such "active listening"
is not only the secret to fulfilling relationships between people, but
a vital passageway to faith. — Phillip L. Berman in The Journey
Home

God speaks to us every day only we don't know how to listen. —

Mahatma Gandhi quoted in In the Middle of This Road We Call Life
by James W. Jones

The greatest wisdom is listening to the guidance of the heart. —

Kabir Helminski in The Knowing Heart
The central mantra of the Jewish people is "Hear, O Israel." Listen.
The command implies that still one can hear, that the revelation is
still happening. — Michael Lerner in Jewish Renewal

A wealth of teaching is available. Our work is not so much to find a

teacher as to improvise our own receptivity and sharpen our ability
to hear the teachings all around us. — David A. Cooper in Silence,
Simplicity & Solitude

Likewise today, native people are encouraged to inhale the sweet

smells of the earth, see things in perspective, listen to both sides of
every story, and to speak only half as much as they listen. — Evan T.
Pritchard in No Word for Time

For listening is the act of entering the skin of the other and wearing
it for a time as if it were our own. Listening is the gateway to
understanding. — David Spangler in Parent as Mystic, Mystic as
Parent

All things and all men, so to speak, call on us with small or loud
voices. They want us to listen, they want us to understand their
intrinsic claims, their justice of being.... But we can give it to them
only through the love that listens.— Paul Tillich quoted in Your
Mythic Journey by Sam Keen

Great listening is in its way no less difficult than great writing. It is

simply less cultivated, less noted, less hailed by the world. The
Jewish tradition is a tradition of those who could listen with their
minds and souls. — David J. Wolpe in In Speech and In Silence

I need you to listen to me.

No one has listened to me.
No one understands my suffering,
including the ones who say they love me.
The pain inside me
is suffocating me.
It is the TNT
that makes up the bomb.
— Thich Nhat Hanh in Call Me by My True Names
Book Excerpts

An Excerpt from The Secret Language of Signs:

How to Interpret the Coincidences and
Symbols in Your Life by Denise Linn

Denise Linn contends that we need to re-learn

the secret language of signs. Here is an excerpt
on the spiritual language of listening.

"In every moment the universe is whispering to

you. There are messages for you carried on the
winds. There is wisdom for you in the morning songs of the birds
outside your window and in the soft murmurs of an ebbing sea. Even
ordinary, everyday events in your life carry communications from
the realm of spirit.

"Right now as you read this paragraph, you are surrounded by

personal messages from the world around you. Whether you are
conscious of it or not, you are always encircled by signs. Of course,
your night hours are filled with signs that appear in your dreams;
however, no less valid are the signs that encompass you in your
waking life. Signs are powerful indicators that can give you
understanding about yourself and insight about direction in life.
They can also reflect what is occurring in your subconscious mind,
beneath your conscious awareness.

"In times past, people understood and knew how to interpret these
portents and omens. In fact, the entire destiny of a tribe or even a
nation was often decided by signs. However, as technology
expanded, people became more and more isolated from their
connection to the earth and their inner wisdom. Most lost their
ability to listen to the secret messages around them and to see the
signposts giving personal guidance at every moment.

"It is now time to regain this lost ability. Our planet is changing very
quickly, and in the face of this rising tide of change we need to
remember how to taste the messages in the wind and how to listen
to the gentle voices in the clouds. This ability will be increasingly
important in the years ahead. As we hurtle into the twenty-first
century, there is an accelerated awakening of planetary
consciousness. We are entering a time of signs and omens. There
has never been a more powerful time in the history of our planet to
realize our magnificence. Signs can show us the way. It is now time
to relearn how to listen to the whispers of the universe."

Practice of the Day

Spiritual teaching has always pointed to the fact that everything in

creation has a sound, its own unique vibration. As conscious
listeners we may perceive more and more of what the universe is
saying to us by the simple act of listening. We can learn to
appreciate each and every sound. — Katherine Le Mee in Chant

Imagery Exercise

Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello has an exercise where you invite God
to pay attention to the sounds of the natural world through you. It
uses an “Altered Point of Ear.”

Close your eyes. Begin by listening to the rhythm and the sound of
your own breath. Then allow the sounds in the room around you to
fall gently on your ears. Do not think about them, simply hear them
as sounds. . . . Now see yourself as a cat wandering through your
house and hearing with the cat’s ears . . . See yourself becoming a
bird flying through the air and hearing with the bird’s ears. . . . See
yourself as a tree standing in your backyard and hearing with the
tree’s ears. . . . Feel yourself becoming part of the earth and
hearing what the earth is hearing . . . Now hear what God is hearing
from the world right now. Rest in the sensation that God is listening
through your ears. . . . When you are ready, open your eyes.
LOVE
Enhances:
Intimacy

Balances/Counters:
Fear

The Basic Practice

Love of self, love of neighbors, and love of God are the foundational
stones of the world's religions. Spiraling out from the core of our
being, our other loves are also cobblestones on the spiritual path:
love of family, of partner, of friends, of community, of animals, of
nature, of country, of things, of hobbies, of work. Love is not
something that you just fall into, as the romantic songs suggest.
Love is a spiritual practice. You can get better at it over time.

Begin by recognizing that you can't love others until you truly love
yourself — body, mind, and soul. As you move through a day, be
aware of love's expressions emerging from you or coming toward
you — attraction, focus, absorption, desire, adoration, security,
trust, empathy, caring, harmony, contentment, communion.
Practice extending the reach of these feelings. It is through loving
that we experience the love of God.

Why This Practice May Be For You

Fear always trips us up on the spiritual path, and it surfaces most

often around the practice of love. We are afraid to love and worry
that nobody will love us back. We are apprehensive about the
quality of our love relationships: are they strong enough, good
enough, durable enough? Whereas we don't usually question the
quality of our acts of kindness, say, we put performance
measurements on our loving.

Love and intimacy go together, but if we have been disappointed by

love, we worry that intimacy is beyond our reach. We fear that we
have lost the ability to feel love, or that we are just not loveable,
or that we will be hurt again. Sometimes we even fear that love will
change us.

Hearing all this fretful thinking, God the Beloved writes one
prescription over and over: Fear not! I love you.

Quotations

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you
without leaving better and happier. — Mother Teresa quoted in The
Gentle Smile by Diane Berke

Falling in love is the most important clue a human can ever find to
his or her latent spiritual needs and potentialities. Without this
experience a human's relationship with God remains largely one of
obedience, respect and will, but one that ultimately lacks passion,
heart and love. — Patrick Arnold

Like a lover who spends all his time thinking of his distant love, God
has been thinking of me since before I was born, for all eternity. —
Ernesto Cardenal in Abide in Love

Learning how to love is the goal and the purpose of spiritual life —
not learning how to develop psychic powers, not learning how to
bow, chant, do yoga, or even meditate, but learning to love. Love is
the truth. Love is the light. — Lama Surya Das in Awakening to the
Sacred

Love was meant to be also a sign, a symbol, a messenger, a telltale

of the Divine.... Love is a messenger from God saying that every
human affection and every ecstasy of love are sparks from the great
flame of love that is God. — Fulton J. Sheen in From the Angel's
Blackboard
The human mind makes foolish divisions in what love sees as one. —
Anthony de Mello in The Heart of Enlightenment

Every time we make love to a human being, fully, we are making

love to everything that lives and breathes. In that sense it becomes
communion. It is a sacrament. — Terry Tempest Williams quoted in
Listening to the Land by Derrick Jensen

Hatred ever kills; love never dies. Such is the vast difference
between the two. What is obtained by love is retained for all time.
What is obtained by hatred proves a burden in reality, for it
increases hatred. The duty of a human being is to diminish hatred
and to promote love. — Mahatma Gandhi quoted in The Way to God
edited by M. S. Desphande

The only reason there is for living is love. There is no other reason
for staying on earth. — Joel Goldsmith in Spiritual Healing

To take good care of yourself and to take good care of living beings
and of the environment is the best way to love God. — Thich Nhat
Hanh in Living Buddha, Living Christ

I believe more and more that the greatest single help to a spiritual
life is a deep and living human love for another. . . . I have
solemnly resolved to love more deeply and more truly and to be a
sweeter man. — Rufus Jones in Rufus Jones: Essential Writings

When we stop seeing the world as a "problem" to be solved, when

instead we open our hearts to the mystery of our common suffering,
we may find ourselves where we least expected to be: in a world
transformed by love. — Philip Simmons in Learning to Fall

The only unhappiness is not to love God. — Thomas Merton quoted

in Dialogues with Silence edited by Jonathan Montaldo

God may do something silly at any time, because, like any lover,
God does not reason. God is drunk with love. — Ernesto Cardenal
quoted in Finding Deep Joy by Robert Ellwood

We can never travel beyond the arms of the Divine. — Martin

Luther King, Jr. quoted in The Gift of Kabbalah by Tamar Frankiel
Let us make a pledge that, if not all day or all night long, at least
for a few moments every day, we will make an effort to experience
love, love that is free from selfishness, free from desire, free from
expectation, love that is complete freedom. — Swami
Chidvilasananda in Kindle My Heart

Let the good in me

connect with the good
in others,
until all the world
is transformed through
the compelling power
of love.
— Rebbe Nachman of Breslov in The Gentle Weapon

This world is nothing but a school of love; our relationships with our
husband or wife, with our children and parents, with our friends
and relatives are the university in which we are meant to learn
what love and devotion truly are. — Swami Muktananda quoted in
The Inner Treasure by Jonathan Star

"Tell us, Lover! Do you possess riches?"

"Yes," he replied, "I have love."
"Do you possess poverty?"
"Yes," he replied, "because my love is not as great as it should be."
— Ramon Lull quoted in God Hunger by John Kirvan

Where there is love and wisdom, there is neither fear nor

ignorance. — Saint Francis quoted in The Sun & Moon Over Assisi by
Gerard Thomas Straub

He is truly great who is great in charity. — Thomas A. Kempis

quoted in The Sun & Moon Over Assisi by Gerard Thomas Straub
Book Excerpts

An excerpt from When People Grieve: The

Power of Love in the Midst of Pain by Paula
D'Arcy

Writer and retreat leader Paul D'rcy shares her

ideas on the grieving process and the healing
and insight that comes through pain. Here is an
excerpt on love.

"Months into the journey with grief I found some

words printed in an obscure literary bulletin.
'We hear the rain, but not the snow .... ' I want to thank Kent
Nerburn for being part of my community. I want him to know that
upon reading those words, a power rose up in me. The words found
their way into my heart. They challenged me to reach toward life
with passion and intensity, to live so carefully that I would be aware
of the sound of snow.

"Was grief really so capricious that healing could be kindled even by

a simple phrase? Apparently. Without any understanding of why
those words moved me, I found in them a shimmer of light. That
day, for the first time in months, I wasn't fully dominated by either
anger or depression. I had crossed some imaginary inner threshold
and found a willingness, at least in that moment, to open my heart
again. I was willing because I wanted something. I wanted to know
what it would be like to hear the snow. I wanted to experience a
life that could be that brilliant. Anne Wilson Schaef said, 'Choosing
not to die is not the same as choosing to live.' She's right. Now I
found myself no longer satisfied with being half-asleep and half-
awake. I wanted to be fully alive.

"Ultimately the road of grief became a great opening through which

a mysterious alchemy took place. My tears began to transform into
courage. I was no longer hesitant to ask any question, and even to
question the status quo. Pain began to shift into sight: I found
myself thinking, Maybe love appears in endless form, not just in one
or two individuals to whom I cling. Maybe that's the point. Maybe
we should be drunk with love all the time.
"Thirty years later, the thought of being drunk with love still speaks
to me. Today I stand on stages and talk about the journey,
emphasizing all that is possible, knowing that the pain that once
defeated me, the pain that was changed by love, makes this
possible. The clarity brought by loss continues to teach me, even
after so many years. Once I became willing to learn, a new world
opened, and it was a world I hadn't seen before. Past my angry,
passionate feelings about life's injustices, something else was
waiting to be known. This new perspective was limitless. It
encompassed the force of love and the greater nature hidden within
each person ... a nature that feeds on freedom, not fear.

"Subsequent deaths and losses, like my mother's death, continue the

process of learning and growth. And each time, even if it is just one
person, a community appears. It is seldom the same ones who
helped me in the past, because I've moved on, literally and
figuratively. Yet other beautiful souls come forward and form the
safety net of love that supports me on the way. Perhaps no single
act is more consequential than reaching out to such a community
and staying open to the healing love it offers.

"Sometimes I don't meet this community in person. The love may

arrive as a book placed in my hands or the lyrics to a song. Still, it is
the same. It is love reaching out to encourage the emergence of
greater love. That's the formula. It reminds me of times when I've
looked up into the skies and found a particularly bright
constellation, a pattern of light shining without expectation or
demand. A glow of stars that is simply there. And I know that
unconditional love, reaching out heart to heart, is like that bridge
of stars."

Teaching Stories

A Teaching Story from Mother Teresa: No Greater Love edited by

Becky Benenate and Joseph Durepos

Mother Teresa: No Greater Love brings us the words of this

century's most visible saint. Here is one of her stories.
"I will never forget one day in Venezuela when I went to visit a
family who had given us a lamb. I went to thank them and there I
found out that they had a badly crippled child. I asked the mother,
"What is the child's name?" The mother gave me a most beautiful
answer. "We call him 'Teacher of Love,' because he keeps on
teaching us how to love. Everything we do for him is our love for
God in action."

To Practice: Who has been a Teacher of Love for you? When have
you been a Teacher of Love for someone else?
NURTURING
Enhances:
Balance

Balances/Counters:
Deprivation, Codependency

The Basic Practice

A spiritual journey is usually considered to be a movement toward

community and Spirit but an essential loop of our route must pass
through the realm of self. We have to find out who we are before
we can make commitments to others. We have to care for our own
souls in order to have the energy and strength to care for our
families, our neighbors, and the earth.

There are many ways to practice nurturing, and everyone will find
his or her own best ways to receive and give nourishment. The
spiritual traditions emphasize two in particular. The first is study.
Be a lifelong learner; read and contemplate sacred texts and other
sources of inspiration that take you deeper into yourself and out
into the wider world. Second, keep the Sabbath. Dedicate some of
your time to leisure and reflection.

Why This Practice May Be For You

A regular regimen of nurturing helps you achieve a balance in your

life between inner exploration and outer involvement, time alone
and time with others, work and play. Feeling imbalanced — that
things are out of whack in your life — is a sure sign that you need to
step back and engage in self-care to regain your equilibrium.
Actually, we usually recognize our need for nurturing by its
contrasts — feeling deprived, ignored and neglected. If you are
starved for attention, most likely you lack spiritual sustenance in
other areas of your life as well.

There are also shadow elements associated with nurturing. We can

be so involved in nurturing ourselves that we become totally self-
absorbed. We can go too far under the guise of nurturing others, so
that our caring becomes a way of controlling them. Or we can
sacrifice ourselves and our best interests in our concern for others,
mistaking codependency for nurturing. Again, a lack of balance is
the key symptom.

Quotations

Inside each of us there is a beautiful flower garden. This is the

garden of the soul. Here we can enjoy the fragrance of each and
every flower and discover the true beauty and boundless freedom of
our inner selves. — Sri Chinmoy

We are each meant to be mothers of God. — Meister Eckhart

quoted in Communion, Community, Commonweal edited by John
Mogabgab

Looking deeply at any one thing, we see the whole cosmos. The one
is made of the many. To take care of ourselves, we take care of
those around us. — Thich Nhat Hanh in Cultivating the Mind of Love

Personal holiness involves what you take into your body, visually,
aurally, or orally. You are what you see and hear. — Lawrence
Kushner in The Book of Words

Self-care is not selfish or self-indulgent. We cannot nurture others

from a dry well. We need to take care of our own needs first, then
we can give from our surplus, our abundance. — Jennifer Louden in
The Woman's Comfort Book

Teaching a child to care for a goldfish — learning about its needs,

respecting its otherness, delighting in its shimmering colors and
swimming skills — is a better education in caring than is a lecture on
global warming. — Sallie McFague in Super, Natural Christians

Living in the womb of God, caressed by the touch of the Beloved, I

am made whole and regain the strength to meet the next moment.
As I learn to be present to God in the midst of the dailiness and
clutter of my life, I begin to see that I live in the womb of God. God
encompasses me as a mother and father caress their unborn child.
The child cannot see her parents caressing her, but senses she is
loved and known. — Celeste Snowber Schroeder in In the Womb of
God

To my inner perceptions, the whole of creation is constantly in a

state of birthing — myriad possibilities, potentials, insights,
energies, and qualities are emerging daily — and we are deeply
woven into that process as midwives, participants, creations,
creatures, and co-creators all rolled into one. — David Spangler in
Parent as Mystic, Mystic as Parent

In New Zealand, some nurseries plant kiwi fruit vines near other
plants because the kiwi fruit attract bees. The bees then pollinate
not only the kiwi but the other plants as well. The same can be said
about nurturing activities in which we get involved. Such food for
our soul not only feeds us now but also opens up new possibilities
that we might not have even considered. — Robert J. Wicks in After
50

When the body is finally listened to, it becomes eloquent. It's like
changing from a fiddle to a Stradivarius. It gets much more highly
attuned. — Marion Woodman in Interviews with Marion Woodman

I have a thin red fabric from India that I drape around my neck as a
scarf when I take a long-distance flight. Nobody needs to know that
this scarf is sometimes a covering for my altar at home, but I can't
forget that it is soaked with years of prayer. — Regina Sara Ryan in
Praying Dangerously
Book Excerpts

An Excerpt from 101 Things I Wish I Knew

When I Got Married: Simple Lessons to Make
Love Last by Linda and Charlie Bloom

Linda and Charlie Bloom present 101 simple

practices to make love last in marriage. Here is
one that is animated by the spiritual practice of
nurturing.

"One of the greatest hazards of marriage is the

tendency for the drudgery of daily living to
displace the deeper purpose of the relationship. There's no denying
the need to manage the material and financial responsibilities of a
family. The challenge is to keep these concerns in their place so
they don't weigh so heavily upon us that they drown out the voice
that reflects our deeper needs and longings. One of the ways to
maintain the kind of perspective that nourishes our heart, as well as
our hearth, is to keep romance alive.

"Romance is more than candlelight and flowers; it's a quality of

attention and feeling that we bring to each other in affirmation of
our love and gratitude. It is the creation of an environment that
nurtures and supports our heart's deepest desires. Like the Sabbath,
which is intended as a respite from the obligations of daily life and
a means of spiritual replenishment, romance is a way of honoring
the sacred space of our mutual love. Romance is a state of mind, a
state of being wherein we focus our loving attention on each other
in a way that interrupts the daily routines that often threaten to
suffocate the flame of our love's passion.

"It is easy to slip into the role of roommate, friend, business

partner, and coparent. We forget to be lovers or else make it such a
low priority that everything else takes precedence. We stop dating.
We fail to nurture the sweet connection that once consumed us
with delight and passion. We don't fall out of love; we simply allow
our love to atrophy by failing to attend to it. We forget that our
love, like all living organisms, requires ongoing nurturance and
maintenance. Keeping romance alive, in whatever forms we choose,
is the antidote to the malaise that afflicts an enormous number of
marriages.

"As important as the romance itself is our motivation for doing it. If
we act out of a sense of duty, then romance simply becomes one
more obligation to fulfill. Anything done primarily out of a sense of
obligation will be more likely to promote resentment and
disappointment rather than fulfillment. The seeds of romance can
be nurtured during those moments when we experience love or
gratitude toward our partner. We can convert these feelings to
romance by coming up with ways to honor, surprise, and delight our
beloved. Romance can be a spontaneous expression of affection, or
it can involve extensive plans that require great preparation."

Teaching Stories

A Teaching Story from The Time Is Now: Sixty "Time Pieces" for
Getting the Most Out of Every Day by Daniel S. Wolk

Rabbi Daniel Wolk has put together a book on his ideas on seeking
the positive in life and breaking old patterns. Here's a parable he
uses to illustrate the timeliness of the Sabbath:

"A Hasidic Jew, a man whose life revolved around the synagogue
and the Sabbath was asked, 'Aren't you depressed on Sunday when
the Sabbath is over?'

" 'Not at all,' the devout man answered. 'On Sunday I still bathe in
the warmth of the day before.'

" 'And, Monday? Tuesday?'

"The Hasid smiled, 'No, no. On those days I can think back to the
Sabbath.'

" 'Well, surely, on Wednesday, you must be depressed. The Sabbath

is four days past.'
" 'Oh,' the Hasid sighed, 'You are correct, but on Wednesday I know
the Sabbath will come again in two days and I am filled with joy.' "

Practice of the Day

There is an Indian proverb or axiom that says that everyone is a

house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a
spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but,
unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it
aired, we are not a complete person. — Rumer Godden in A House
with Four Rooms

To Practice This Thought: Assess the condition of your four rooms.

Which one looks like you visit it regularly? Which needs airing out?
OPENNESS
Enhances:
Empathy, Flexibility

Balances/Counters:
Close-mindedness

The Basic Practice

It is important in the spiritual life to keep an open mind, open to ideas,

experiences, people, the world, and the Sacred. Openness is an ability
to go with the flow, as Taoism puts it, without expecting predetermined
outcomes. It means being receptive to new possibilities, without
prejudging them. It is an ability to make yourself available to out-of-the-
ordinary opportunities. Indeed, openness to the unknown, the exotic,
and the bizarre is usually seen as the mark of a free spirit.

You can increase your openness by practicing empathy. Move outside

yourself into another's situation. Try to access the other's feelings and
ideas. For the purposes of practice, the more eccentric your choice, the
better.

Why This Practice May Be For You

The contrast to openness is narrow-mindedness. It is characterized by a

rigidity of mind. Pessimistic people who have armored themselves against
preconceived disappointments are not open. Dogmatic and stubborn
people are basically unapproachable.

How available are you to others? How interested are you in people,
especially those quite different from you? How flexible are you? Do you
usually think you already know how things are going to come out? Are you
willing to try something new? These are the questions to ask to assess
your openness and to determine the benefits you might derive from this
practice.

Quotations

Doubt is a state of openness and unknowing. It's a willingness to not be in

charge, to not know what is going to happen next. The state of doubt
allows us to explore things in an open and fresh way.
— Bernard Glassman and Rick Fields in Instructions to the Cook

Keeping a journal thins my skin. I feel open to everything, aware,

charged by the acquisition of intensity. — Doris Grumbach in Extra
Innings

Radical openness is not wanting to miss what is going on. The spiritual
dimension of life has always been equated with total self-giving of energy
and vigorous involvement — elements of wholeheartedness.
— Vivienne Hall quoted in Earth and Spirit edited by Fritz Hull

Openness is a receptivity to everyone and everything. It is quite

fundamentally an other-centeredness, a disposition of availability to
others. — Wayne Teasdale in The Community of Wisdoms edited by
Wayne Teasdale and George Cairns

The old divines talked about the gift of faith. It seems to me that there is
an earlier gift, a desire, an openness to receive the light when and if it is
offered. This openness is a quality of perception like poetry or divination
or the wonderful imagination of a happy child. — Morris West in A View
from the Ridge

By being receptive, we can avail ourselves of the spiritual wealth

available to us. By being open, we can receive things beyond what we
ourselves might imagine. — Deng Ming-Dao in Everyday Tao

To live in an enchanting world we also have to assume a receptive

posture rather than an exclusively active one. We can become skilled at
allowing the world in, taking its secrets to heart and finding power
outside of ourselves. — Thomas Moore in The Education of the Heart
Mostly, heartful practice is about keeping the heart open to the world
around us — to people, places, ourselves, and the divine. It means
coming from a place of empathic attunement. It's about seeing the
connections, the interlocking webs of energy among people and things,
and residing as much as possible in that place of no separation. —
Belleruth Naparstek in Your Sixth Sense

Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the

world tickle your heart, your raw and beautiful heart. You are willing to
open up, without resistance or shyness, and face the world. You are
willing to share your heart with others. — Chogyam Trungpa in The
Essential Chogyam Trungpa edited by Carolyn Rose Gimian

Whether listening or reading teachings, we are like a vase meant to

collect wisdom. — the Dalai Lama

Book Excerpts

An Excerpt from Blue Truth: A Spiritual Guide to

Life & Death and Love & Sex by David Deida

David Deida sheds light on the spiritual practice of

openness and what that means in terms of
relationships, self-realization, and our emotional
life. Here is an excerpt.

"Right now, and in every moment, you are either

closing or opening. You are either stressfully waiting
for something — more money, security, affection —
or you are living from your deep heart, opening as
the entire moment, and giving what you most deeply desire to give,
without waiting.

"If you are waiting for anything in order to live and love without holding
back, then you suffer. Every moment is the most important moment of
your life. No future time is better than now to let down your guard and
love.
"Everything you do right now ripples outward and affects everyone. Your
posture can shine your heart or transmit anxiety. Your breath can radiate
love or muddy the room in depression. Your glance can awaken joy. Your
words can inspire freedom. Your every act can open hearts and minds.

"Opening from heart to all, you live as a gift to all. In every moment, you
are either opening or closing. Right now, you are choosing to open and
give fully or you are waiting. How does your choice feel? . . .

"Your heart always knows the truth of openness. In every moment of your
life, your heart tacitly compares the closed suffering that you are doing
to the bliss of your true openness. 'This moment can be deeper.' 'Our love
can be more full.' 'My life can be more fulfilling.' Your heart knows the
truth of openness and suffers the tense lie of your closure.

"Chronic dissatisfaction is how you sense that you are living this lie. No
matter how much pleasure or pain comes your way, dissatisfaction means
you are resisting the openness of the moment, the openness who you
are, the truth. When you are not open to emotions, people, and
situations, then you are denying your most basic nature, the openness
who you are.

"Practice being openness by opening to feel. Just as you are, even though
you may have habits of closure, you can always practice opening to feel.
Open to feel whatever you are feeling now. Open to feel your breath
moving in and out, feel the posture of your body, feel the space and
motion in your room around you, feel the emotional tone of the people
nearest to you. Open and feel, Open as feeling. Open to feel everything,
and feel as openness itself."

Teaching Stories

A Teaching Story from Taoism: Way Beyond Seeking by Alan Watts

Much of the tension in the West is the result of trying so hard to make
things happen and to control outcomes. Alan Watts (1915-1973), was a
great explicator of the Oriental path. In this book, he defines "wu-wei" as
"don't force it" and tells the following story.

"Chuang-tzu tells a lovely tale about a sage who was wandering along the
bank of a river near an enormous cataract. Suddenly, way up at the top
of it, he saw an old man roll off the bank into the water, and he thought,
'This man must be old and ill and is putting an end to himself.' But a few
minutes later, way down below the cataract, the old man jumped out of
the stream and started running along the bank. So the sage and his
disciples hurried, scooting after him and, having caught up with him told
him that what he'd done had been the most amazing thing they'd ever
seen. 'How did you survive?' they asked. 'Well,' he answered, 'there is no
special trick. I just went in with a swirl and came out with a whirl. I
made myself like the water, so that there was no conflict between me
and the water.' "

To Practice: The next time you are in a tight or tough situation, try to
practice the watercourse way of least resistance. Go with the flow and
see what happens.

Prayer

This prayer is from William Penn, an English Quaker who founded the
colony of Pennsylvania in America, which he envisioned as a place of
religious and personal freedom.

O God, help us not to despise or oppose what we do not understand.

THRIFT

Book Review
By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

David Blankenhorn is founder and

president of the Institute for American
Values, a nonpartisan organization
dedicated to strengthening families and
civil society in the United States and
the world. For the last three years, he
has led an initiative at the Institute to
study thrift.

The result of his efforts is a timely overview of this virtue which

encompasses the ideals of hard work, financial prudence, and generosity.
Blankenhorn has gathered hundreds of quotations, sayings, proverbs, and
photographs from the past when thrift was regarded as a highly
esteemed cultural value.

We are now seeing the disastrous consequences of an era of easy credit,

indebtedness, instant gratification, and living beyond our means. The
worldwide financial crisis will be with us for quite a while, and so this is
a perfect time to reconsider other approaches to handling money and
possessions.
In 1926, Richardson Campbell wrote: "There are few words in the English
language that have a more interesting history, or convey a deeper moral
than the word 'Thrift.' " Blankenhorn agrees. He sees the term as "a
multifaceted philosophical concept for which there is no single precise
synonym in the English language." He tackles this complex subject by
considering five distinct ways of understanding what thrift is: as growing,
as good fortune, as prospering, as saving, and as hoarding. Today if you
asked most academics what the term means, they would respond, "Being
cheap and stingy."

Blankenhorn sees thrift as a set of principles and ethical guidelines that

lead us to use all we have in the wisest way to promote thriving. It is
made up of three traits:

"Industry: hard work; the great value and necessity of persistent,

diligent, careful, productive labor. (A thrift maxim: the reward for good
work is more work.)

Frugality: being sparing, as regards using or spending for myself; the

worth of conserving and reusing; and the importance of eliminating
waste and avoiding extravagance.

Trusteeship: what is mine, I hold in trust; my wealth (my thrift) is

ultimately for the purpose of helping others and contributing to the
common good."

Being thrifty is worked out in the domains of individual and household,

commercial, and public; it is based on three assumptions about human
nature:

1. Productive work is good

2. What we have is not ours.

3. Giving people things is not as good as helping them to help

themselves.

In Moral Education in School and Home, J. O. Engleman stated in 1918:

"To earn what you can; spend what you must; give what you should,
and save the rest — this is thrift."

After discussing the cases against thrift made through the years,
Blankenhorn introduces a large and impressive group of thrift visionaries
who have shed light on the subject, including Daniel Defoe, John Wesley,
Benjamin Franklin, Clara Barton, John Wanamaker, Elbert Hubbard,
Booker T. Washington, and Frank Capra. In his examination of institutions
that have advanced the cause of thrift, the author looks at friendly and
fraternal societies, mutual savings banks, producer and consumer
cooperatives, building and loan associations, and credit unions. Also
under this umbrella, Blankenhorn talks about four things which could
come to the fore during our present-day financial crisis: thrift boxes,
gardens, public libraries, and thrift shops. He ends this section with
social movements which have been generated to advocate and promote
pro-thrift social changes by building international solidarity, bringing
people together, organizing sacrifice, and training children.